iAnywhere Water System User Manual

Chapter 2 Building an Object-Oriented Model

Defining operations

An operation is a service that can be requested from an object to effect

behavior. It has a name and a list of parameters. An operation is a

specification of a transformation or query that an object may be called to

execute.

Operation names within a class must be unique. You can give identical names

to two or more operations only if they exist in different classes.

Operation properties

An operation has the following properties:

Property Description

Maximum

length

Parent Object to which the operation belongs to 254

Name Name of the operation 254

Code Reference name for the operation 254

Comment Descriptive comment for the operation —

Stereotype Subclassification of an operation derived from an

existing one. Extends the semantics of an operation

without changing it's structure

—

Return Type A list of values returned by a call of the operation.

If there are no values returned by the operation, the

return type value is null

—

Visibility Visibility of the operation, whose value denotes

how it may be seen outside its enclosing name

space

—

Event Significant occurrence that has a location in time

and space. An event can trigger a state transition

—

Abstract Indicates that the operation cannot be instantiated

and therefore has no direct instances

—

Final Indicates that the operation cannot be redefined —

Static Defines the operation as static, meaning it cannot

be modified

—

An operation definition also includes business rules, and parameters, which

are defined on associated property sheets.