Book Description

Book Description Recipient of the 1997 Jolt Award. The developer of the acclaimed Eiffel programming language comes through with one of the clearest and most informative books about computers ever committed to paper. Object-Oriented Software Construction is the gospel of object-oriented technology and it deserves to be spread everywhere. Meyer opens with coverage of the need for an object-oriented approach to software development, citing improved quality and development speed as key advantages of the approach. He then explains all the key criteria that define an object- oriented approach to a problem. Meyer pays attention to techniques, such as classes, objects, memory management, and more, returning to each technique and polishing his readers' knowledge of it as he explains how to employ it "well." In a section on advanced topics, Meyer explores interesting and relevant topics, such as persistent objects stored in a database. He also offers a sort of "Do and Don't" section in which he enumerates common mistakes and ways to avoid them. Management information isn't the main point of Object-Oriented Software Construction, but you'll find some in its pages. Meyer concludes his tour de force with comparisons of all the key object-oriented languages, including Java. He also covers the potential of simulating object technology in non-object-oriented languages, such as Pascal and Fortran. The companion CD-ROM includes the full text of this book in hypertext form, as well as some tools for designing object-oriented systems. If you program computers, you need to read this book. Synopsis A detailed exploration of the major topics in object technology and methodology. Covers all principal issues, methods and languages (C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel etc.). 500 bibliographical references and URLs, 200 precise methodological principles, hundreds of figures. Two-color printing for more readability. Book Info Explores the fundamental issue of software quality and provides a brief survey of the method's technical characteristics. Presents the technical components of the method and explores advanced topics. Paper. CD ROM included. DLC: Object oriented programming (Computer science) The publisher, Prentice-Hall ECS Professional The comprehensive reference on all aspects of object technology, from design principles to O-O techniques, Design by Contract, O-O analysis, concurrency, persistence, abstract data types and many more. Written by a pioneer in the field, contains an in-depth analysis of both methodological and technical issues. Comes with a CD-ROM containing: the complete hyperlinked text, for easy reference; software to read the text on major industry platforms; supplementary material (reusable components, mathematical complements); and a complete graphical O-O development environment supporting the concepts of the book. From the Inside Flap Preface Born in the ice-blue waters of the festooned Norwegian coast; amplified (by an aberration of world currents, for which marine geographers have yet to find a suitable explanation) along the much grayer range of the Californian Pacific; viewed by some as a typhoon, by some as a tsunami, and by some as a storm in a teacup — a tidal wave is hitting the shores of the computing world. “Object-oriented” is the latest in term, complementing and in many cases replacing “structured” as the high-tech version of “good” . As is inevitable in such a case, the term is used by different people with different meanings; just as inevitable is the well-known three-step sequence of reactions that meets the introduction of a new methodological principle: (1) “it's trivial” ; (2) “it cannot work” ; (3) “that's how I did it all along anyway” . (The order may var y.) Let us have this clear right away, lest the reader think the author takes a half-hearted approach to his topic: I do not see the object-oriented method as a mere fad; I think it is not trivial (although I shall strive to make it as limpid as I can); I know it works; and I believe it is not only different from but even, to a certain extent, incompatible with the techniques that most people still use today — including some of the principles taught in many software engineering textbooks. I further believe that object technology holds the potential for fundamental changes in the software industry, and that it is here to stay. Finally, I hope that as the reader progresses through these pages, he will share some of my excitement about this promising avenue to software analysis, design and implementation. “Avenue to software analysis, design and implementation” . To present the object-oriented method, this books resolutely takes the viewpoint of software engineering — of the methods, tools and techniques for developing quality software in production environments. This is not the only possible perspective, as there has also been interest in applying object-oriented principles to such areas as exploratory programming and artificial intelligence. Although the presentation does not exclude these appli cations, they are not its main emphasis. Our principal goal in this discussion is to study how practicing software developers, in industrial as well as academic environments, can use object technology to improve (in some cases dramatically) the quality of the software they produce. Structure, reliability, epistemology and classification. Object technology is at its core the combination of four ideas: a structuring method, a reliability discipline, an epistemological principle and a classification technique. The structuring method applies to software decomposition and reuse. Software systems perform certain actions on objects of certain types; to obtain flexible and reusable systems, it is better to base their structure on the object types than on the actions. The resulting concept is a remarkably powerful and versatile mechanism called the class, which in object-oriented software construction serves as the basis for both the modular structure and the type system. The reliability discipline is a radical approach to the problem of building software that does what it is supposed to do. The idea is to treat any system as a collection of components which collaborate the way successful businesses do: by adhering to contracts defining explicitly the obligations and benefits incumbent on each party. Abstract data types are discussed in chapter 6, which also addresses some of the related epistemological issues. The epistemological principle addresses the question of how we should describe the classes. In object technology, the objects described by a class are only defined by what we can do with them: operations (also known as features) and formal properties of these operations (the contracts). This idea is formally expressed by the theory of abstract data types, covered in detail in a chapter of this book. It has far-reaching implications, some going beyond software, and explains why we must not stop at the na•ve concept of “object” borrowed from the ordinary meaning of that word. The tradition of information systems modeling usually assumes an “external reality” that predates any program using it; for the object-oriented developer, such a notion is meaningless, as the reality does not exist independently of what you want to do with it. (More precisely whether it exists or not is an irrelevant question, as we only know what we can use, and what we know of something is defined entire ly by how we can use it.) The classification technique follows from the observation that systematic intellectual work in general and scientific reasoning in particular require devising taxonomies for the domains being studied. Software is no exception, and the object-oriented method relies heavily on a classification discipline known as inheritance. Simple but powerful. The four concepts of class, contract, abstract data type and inheritance immediately raise a number of questions. How do we find and describe classes? How should our programs manipulate classes and the corresponding objects (the instances of these classes)? What are the possible relations between classes? How can we capitalize on the commonalities that may exist between various classes? How do these ideas relate to such key software engineering concerns as extendibility, ease of use and efficiency? Answers to these questions rely on a small but powerful array of techniques for producing reusable, extendible and reliable software: polymorphism and dynamic binding; a new view of types and type checking; genericity, constrained and unconstrained; information hiding; assertions; safe exception handling; automatic garbage collection. Efficient implementation techniques have been developed which permit applying these ideas successfully to both small and large projects under the tight constraints of commerci al software development. Object-oriented techniques have also had a considerable impact on user interfaces and development environments, making it possible to produce much better interactive systems than was possible before. All these important ideas will be studied in detail, so as to equip the reader with tools that are immediately applicable to a wide range of problems. Organization of the text. In the pages that follow we will review the methods and techniques of object-oriented software construction. The presentation has been divided into six parts. Chapters 1 to 2: Part A is an introduction and overview. It starts by exploring the fundamental issue of software quality and continues with a brief survey of the method's main technical characteristics. This part is almost a little book by itself, providing a first view of the object-oriented approach for hurried readers. Chapters 3 to 6: Part B is not hurried. Entitled “The road to object orientation” , it takes the time to describe the methodological concerns that lead to the central O-O concepts. Its focus is on modularity: what it takes to devise satisfactory structures for “in-the-large” system construction. It ends with a presentation of abstract data types, the mathematical basis for object technology. The mathematics involved is elementary, and less mathematically inclined readers may content themselves with the basic ideas, but the presentation provides the theoretical background that you will need for a full understanding of O-O principles and issues. Chapters 7 to 18: Part C is the technical core of the book. It presents, one by one, the central technical components of the method: classes; objects and the associated run-time model; memory management issues; genericity and typing; design by contract, assertions, exceptions; inheritance, the associated concepts of polymorphism and dynamic binding, and their many exciting applications. Chapters 19 to 29: Part D discusses methodology, with special emphasis on analysis and design. Through several in-depth case studies, it presents some fundamental design patterns, and covers such central questions as how to find the classes, how to use inheritance properly, and how to design reusable libraries. It starts with a meta-level discussion of the intellectual requirements on methodologists and other advice-givers; it concludes with a review of the software process (the lifecycle model) for O-O development and a disc ussion of how best to teach the method in both industry and universities. Chapters 30 to 32: Part E explores advanced topics: concurrency, distribution, client-server development and the Internet; persistence, schema evolution and object-oriented databases; the design of interactive systems with modern (“GUI” ) graphical interfaces. Chapters 33 to 35. Part F is a review of how the ideas From the Back Cover The definitive reference on the most important new technology in software! “While the original version of OOSC is a classic, OOSC 2/E is destined to overshadow it and all other general introductions . . . literally an epic work.” —James C. McKim, Jr., Hartford Graduate Center “Compelling. Extremely well-written and literate . . . I recaptured that same sense of intellectual excitement I felt reading the first edition for the first time.” —Paul Dubois, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Editor, Scientific Programming Dept., Computers in Physics “The definitive tome on Object-Orientation . . . the finest piece of writing and thinking about this vast subject . . . Bertrand has a lot to say of great importance and says it well in this significantly revised book.” —Richard Wiener, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Editor, Journal for Object-Oriented Programming A whole generation was introduced to object technology through the first edition of Bertrand Meyer's OOSC. This long-awaited new edition retains the qualities of clarity, practicality and scholarship that made the first an instant best-seller. It has been thoroughly revised and considerably expanded. No other book on the market provides such a breadth and depth of coverage on the most important technology in software development. SOME OF THE NEW TOPICS COVERED IN DEPTH BY THIS SECOND EDITION: * Concurrency, distribution, client-server and the Internet. * Object-oriented databases, persistence, schema evolution. * Design by contract: how to build software that works the first time around. * A study of fundamental design patterns. * How to find the classes and many others topics of object-oriented methodology. * How to use inheritance well and detect misuses. * Abstract data types: the theory behind object technology. * Typing: role, issues and solutions. * More than 400 references to books, articles, Web pages, newsgroups; glossary of object technology. * And many new developments on the topics of the first edition: reusability, modularity, software quality, O-O languages, inheritance techniques, genericity, memory management, etc. About the Author BERTRAND MEYER is one of the pioneers of modern software engineering, whose experience spans both industry and academia. He has led the development of successful O-O products and libraries totaling thousands of classes. His Prentice Hall books include Object Success (an introduction to object technology for managers), Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages, Eiffel: The Language, Object-Oriented Applications, and Reusable Software. He is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences and consultant for Fortune 500 companies, editor of the Object-Oriented Series, associate member of the applications section of the French Academy of Sciences, chairman of the TOOLS conference series, and editor of the Object Technology department of IEEE Computer.

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