Sound and Relaxed Behavioural Inheritance

Nuno Amalio

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-15792-0_11

Sound and Relaxed Behavioural Inheritance

Nuno Amalio

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Abstract

Object-oriented (OO) inheritance establishes taxonomies of OO classes. Behavioural inheritance (BI), a strong version, emphasises substitutability: objects of child classes replace objects of their ascendant classes without any observable effect difference on the system. BI is related to data refinement, but refinement's constrictions rule out many useful OO subclassings. This paper revisits BI at the light of Z and the theory of data refinement. It studies existing solutions to this problem, criticises them, and proposes improved relaxations. The results are applicable to any OO language that supports design-by-contract (DbC). The paper's contributions include three novel BI relaxations supported by a mathematical model with proofs carried out in the Isabelle proof assistant, and an examination of BI in the DbC languages Eiffel, JML and Spec#.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	From Astrophysics to Unconventional Computation: Essays Presented to Susan Stepney on the Occasion of her 60th Birthday
Editors	Andrew Adamatzky, Vivien Kendon
Place of Publication	Switzerland
Publisher	Springer
Pages	255-298
Number of pages	44
ISBN (Print)	2194-7287
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15792-0_11
Publication status	Published (VoR) - 2019

Publication series

Name	Emergence, Complexity and Computation

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10.1007/978-3-030-15792-0_11

Cite this

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abstract = "Object-oriented (OO) inheritance establishes taxonomies of OO classes. Behavioural inheritance (BI), a strong version, emphasises substitutability: objects of child classes replace objects of their ascendant classes without any observable effect difference on the system. BI is related to data refinement, but refinement's constrictions rule out many useful OO subclassings. This paper revisits BI at the light of Z and the theory of data refinement. It studies existing solutions to this problem, criticises them, and proposes improved relaxations. The results are applicable to any OO language that supports design-by-contract (DbC). The paper's contributions include three novel BI relaxations supported by a mathematical model with proofs carried out in the Isabelle proof assistant, and an examination of BI in the DbC languages Eiffel, JML and Spec#.",

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Sound and Relaxed Behavioural Inheritance. / Amalio, Nuno.
From Astrophysics to Unconventional Computation: Essays Presented to Susan Stepney on the Occasion of her 60th Birthday. ed. / Andrew Adamatzky; Vivien Kendon. Switzerland: Springer, 2019. p. 255-298 (Emergence, Complexity and Computation).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

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ER -

Sound and Relaxed Behavioural Inheritance

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