Object Oriented Programming Using C++

Rationale:

Object Technology has been in development for over forty years. It is now embedded in such diverse areas as requirements engineering, software architecture, analysis, design, programming, testing, deployment and maintenance. The most widely used modern programming languages C + + , Java and VB.Net all embrace an object-oriented approach. This module examines the application of object oriented technology to programming. Candidates should have practical experience of at least one object oriented programming language.

Aims:

• To develop an understanding of the principles underpinning object-oriented programming
• To apply object-based approaches

Objectives:

• Explain the motivation for and development of object-oriented programming languages
• Produce a set of use cases given a problem statement
• Produce class diagrams, object interaction diagrams and object state transition diagrams for a given problem
• Describe the essential features of an object-oriented programming language
• Produce and/or debug code fragments that illustrate principles of object-oriented software development
• Describe the principles for testing object-oriented software and derive sets of test data given a specification

Content:
1 FOUNDATIONS

• Genealogy of object oriented languages: structured programming, modular programming, abstract data types, encapsulation, typed and untyped languages, coupling and cohesion.

2 CONCEPTS

• Objects and Classes. Object creation. Objects vs variables. Memory management, garbage collection. Class variables and instance variables. Object initialisation. Constructors and destructors. Methods and messages. Method signatures. Method and operator overloading.
  Single and multiple inheritance. Subclasses and superclasses. Overriding. Invocation of superclass methods and constructors. The relationship between types and classes. Polymorphism. Abstract classes. Inheritance hierarchies. Software reuse.
  Encapsulation: public, private and protected variables and methods.
  Delegation. Collection classes.

3 DESIGN

• Unified Modelling Language (U ML). Use case diagrams: actors, system boundary, <<uses>> and <<extends>>. Scenarios. Class diagrams: associations, aggregation, dependency, and inheritance. Object interaction diagrams, object state transition diagrams.
• Object constraint language (OCL): invariants, preconditions, postconditions.
• Design patterns. Pattern documentation: motivation, prerequisites, structure, participants and consequences. Examples of patterns: Adapter, Decorator, Iterator, Observer, Singleton.

4 PRACTICE

• Iterative and incremental development styles. Design of class hierarchies, refactoring.
• Implementation of designs in an object-oriented programming language.
• Testing object-oriented code. Class testing, constructing class tests from OCL or state transition diagrams, test driver construction. Testing interactions and class hierarchies.