OBJECT-ORIENTED INFORMATION-SYSTEMS - AN INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL

The use of object-oriented techniques in computing and information systems development is likely to increase over the next few decades to become a new standard alongside structured techniques. Consequently information scientists and computer technologists need to become conversant with at least the basic ideas of the object-oriented philosophy. Those ideas are presented here in a form independent of the language of implementation. Examination of the underlying three concerns of encapsulation/information hiding, abstraction/classification and polymorphism/inheritance leads to consideration of the terminology of objects, classes and class-class interactions.