Using inheritance and polymorphism with Ada in government sponsored contracts

  • Authors:

  • Michael Hirasuna

  • Affiliations:

  • -

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGAda Ada Letters
  • Year:
  • 1992

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Abstract

A practical approach for coding object-oriented design in Ada is described. Even though Ada lacks direct support for two important object-oriented constructs, inheritance and polymorphism, an object-orient design can be implemente d with existing portable Ada constructs. More lines of code will be required t o defined the implied constructs of inheritance and polymorphism, but such cod e will have side benefits such as improved readability. The extra lines of code can be minimized with the use of coding rules.This paper does not suggest how Ada can be modified to implement inheritance and polymorphism; such matters are already being addressed by the Ada 9X committee. Instead, it is concern with meeting the needs of government sponsored contracts which require object-oriented design techniques and Ada as th e coding language. Furthermore, this must be done with Ada as it exists today [LRM] and should not require the use of precompilers.Without modification, Ada cannot be as flexible as an object-oriented language; but this is not the issue. In government contracted software, design and coding are distinct phases in the software development. The flexibility of the object-oriented approach can be used in the design phase independently from the target language. The issue is how to code a relatively stable object-oriented design in Ada.