Data processing: software development – installation – and managem – Software program development tool – Testing or debugging
Reexamination Certificate
1999-02-03
2002-05-07
Morse, Gregory (Department: 2124)
Data processing: software development, installation, and managem
Software program development tool
Testing or debugging
C717S143000, C717S116000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06385769
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates, in general, to software programming systems and methods, and more specifically, to visual programming techniques for use with object-oriented software languages.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Software is increasingly becoming a major portion of cost associated with computer systems because it is very “labor-intensive.” Some of this cost is due to the effort involved in writing and debugging programs, other costs involve maintaining programs after they have been written. Accordingly, considerable effort has been expended in order to reduce the time and costs involved with writing, debugging and maintaining moderate and large software programs. Much of this effort has been related to developing programming languages and programming techniques which will allow programmers to build on or “reuse” programs and code segments that have been written by others.
Until very recently, software programming was heavily dominated by an approach referred to as “structured programming.” Common software programming languages used in this approach were, and remain, BASIC, FORTRAN, and PASCAL. These are considered “higher order” languages that are written in human readable code and ultimately translated into machine or computer readable code by a compiler. Typically, structured programs have consisted of a combination of defined variables of specific data types, e.g. integer, real, and character, and a complimentary set of functions or routines which operate on these variables. Often, a program would include sub-routines which are smaller routines within a program or larger routine that carry out certain operations, e.g. printing data in a given output format. The emphasis to this approach was inputs—functions—outputs and they were often represented as flowcharts by the designers, which logically represented how the program functioned and branched into different functional paths. As an increasing number of programs became large (tens of thousands of lines of code and above) structured programs became increasingly complex and difficult to write, troubleshoot and maintain.
Flowcharts became unwieldy and the tracking of errors through permutations of variables, lengthy code, and a wide variety of program branches was time and cost intensive and often produced less than adequate results. Consequently, a new approach to software programming called Object-Oriented Design (OOD) or Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) emerged and has gained increasing popularity among software developers. OOP promised greater reuse and maintainability than its structured programming predecessor because of an emphasis on well-defined and self contained objects, rather than the structured programming emphasis on a proliferation of relatively loosely-related data manipulating functions and subroutines.
Object Oriented Programming techniques involve the definition, creation, use and destruction of “objects.” These objects are software entities comprising data elements, or attributes, and methods, or functions, which manipulate the data elements. The attributes and related methods are treated by the software as an entity and can be created, used and destroyed as if they were a single item. Together, the attributes and methods enable objects to model virtually any real-world entity in terms of the entity's characteristics, represented by the data elements, and the entity's behavior, represented by data manipulation functions or methods. In this way, objects can model concrete things like people and computers, and they can also model abstract concepts like numbers or geometrical designs.
Objects are defined by creating “classes” which are not objects themselves, but which act as templates that instruct the computer how to construct the actual object. A class may, for example, specify the number and type of data variables and the steps involved in the methods which manipulate the object's data. When an object-oriented program is compiled, the class code is compiled into the program, but no objects exist. Therefore, none of the variables or data structures in the compiled program exist or have any memory allotted to them. An object is actually created by the program at runtime by means of a special function called a “constructor” which uses the corresponding class definition and additional information, such as arguments provided during object creation, to construct the object. Likewise, objects can be destroyed by a special function called a “destructor” or can be destroyed by special programs called “garbage collectors” when no longer needed. Objects may be used by using their data and invoking their methods. When an object is created at runtime, memory is allotted and data structures are created.
The principle benefits of object-oriented programming techniques arise out of three basic principles; encapsulation, polymorphism and inheritance. Specifically, objects can be designed to hide, or encapsulate, all, or a portion of, the internal data structure and the internal methods. More-particularly, during program design, a program developer can define objects in which all or some of the attributes and all or some of the related methods are considered “private” or for use only by the object itself. Other data or methods can be declared “public” or available for use by other programs. Access to the private variables by other programs can be controlled by defining public methods for an object which access the object's private data. The public methods form a controlled and consistent interface between the private data and the “outside” world. Any attempt to write program code which directly accesses the private variables causes the compiler to generate an error during program compilation which error stops the compilation process and prevents the program from being run.
Polymorphism is a concept which allows objects and functions which have the same overall format, but which work with different data, to function differently in order to produce consistent results. For example, an addition function may be defined as variable A plus variable B (A+B) and this same format can be used whether the A and B are numbers, characters or dollars and cents. However, the actual program code which performs the addition may differ widely depending on the type of variables that comprise A and B. Polymorphism allows three separate function definitions to be written, one for each type of variable (numbers, characters and dollars). After the functions have been defined, a program can later refer to the addition function by its common format (A+B) and, at runtime, the program will determine which of the three functions is actually called by examining the variable types. Polymorphism allows similar functions which produce analogous results to be “grouped” in the program source code to produce a more logical and clear program flow.
The third principle which underlies object-oriented programming is inheritance, which allows program developers to easily reuse pre-existing programs and to avoid creating software from scratch. The principle of inheritance allows a software developer to declare classes, and the objects which are. later created from them, as related. Specifically, classes may be designated as subclasses of other base classes. A subclass “inherits” and has access to all of the public functions of its base classes just as if these functions appeared in the subclass. Alternatively, a subclass can override some or all of its inherited methods or may modify some or all of its inherited methods merely by defining a new method with the same form. Overriding or modification does not alter the method in the base class, but merely modifies the use of the method in the subclass. The creation of a new subclass which has some of the functionality, with selective modification, of another class allows software developers to easily customize existing code to meet their particular needs.
Object-Oriented Programming languages include C++ and Java, as well as other languages. Eac
Ingberg Todd
Kudirka & Jobse LLP
Morse Gregory
LandOfFree
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