Towards Integration of State Machines and Object-Oriented Languages

The goal of this paper is to obtain a one-to-one correspondence between state machines as e.g. used in UML and object-oriented programming languages. A proposal is made for a language mechanism that makes it possible for an object to change its virtual bindings at run-time. A state of an object may then be represented as a set of virtual bindings. One advantage of object-orientation is that it provides an integrating perspective on many phases of software development, including analysis, design and implementation. For the static set of OO language constructs there is almost a one-to-one correspondence between analysis/design notations and OO programming languages. No such correspondence exists for the dynamic aspects, but the proposed state-mechanism is a contribution to a better correspondence. The proposal is based on previous work by Antero Taivalsaari and compared to the more complex features for changing object behavior as found in CLOS, Smalltalk, and Predicate Classes, it is si...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: TOOLS
• Authors: Ole Lehrmann Madsen
• Keywords: One-to-one Correspondence, Programming Languages, TOOLS 1999, Virtual Bindings