Incorporation and implementation of logical objects in C++

As object-oriented programming has become more popular, many object-oriented analysis and design methods(1-4) have been developed. These analysis and design methods usually model relationships among objects as associations. However, there is a gap between how object relationships are modeled in object-oriented design and how they are implemented using an object-oriented programming language. Most object-oriented programming languages do not provide direct language constructs to represent relationships among objects; even these relationships are identified as associations in the design phase. Furthermore, objects in the object-oriented programming paradigm are generalizations of abstract data types; they are not very effective at addressing the issues of knowledge representation and knowledge deduction that are specific to the development of knowledge-based applications. Although objects are intended to model real world entities in a more natural and direct way, they lack a built-in mechanism for representing relational knowledge and supporting deductive retrieval. This paper seeks to address both of these issues by the introduction of a new concept-logical objects.