Behavioural Subtyping Relations for Object-Oriented Formalisms
Clemens Fischer5
and Heike Wehrheim5 
| (5) |
Fachbereich Informatik, Universität Oldenburg, Postfach 2503, D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany |
Abstract
In this paper we investigate the object-oriented notion of subtyping in the context of behavioural formalisms. Subtyping in OO-formalisms is closely related to the concept of inheritance. The
central issue in the choice of subtyping relations among classes is the principle of substitutability: an instance of the subtype should be usable wherever an instance of the supertype was expected. Depending on the interpretation
of “usable”, we obtain a variety of subtyping relations: stronger subtyping relations, allowing one to share the subtype instance among different clients without any change compared with the supertype, and weaker relations, restricting
the possibilities of interference of different clients on the subtype instance. The subtyping relations are taxonomically
ordered in a hierarchy. The concept of “usability” is formalised via testing scenarios, which provide alternative characterisations for the subtyping relations.
This work was partially funded by the Leibniz Programme of the German Research Council under grant Ol 98/1-1.
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