Integrating Constraints with an Object-Oriented Language
Integrating Constraints with an Object-Oriented Language
Authors: Bjorn Freeman-Benson and Alan Borning
Published in Proceedings of the 1992 European Conference on
Object-Oriented Programming, June 1992, pages 268-286.
Abstract
Constraints are declarative statements of relations among elements of the
language's computational domain, e.g., integers, booleans, strings, and
other objects. Orthogonally, the tools of object-oriented programming,
including encapsulation, inheritance, and dynamic message binding, provide
important mechanisms for extending a language's domain. Although the
integration of constraints and objects seems obvious and natural, one basic
obstacle stands in the way: objects provide a new, larger, computational
domain, which the language's embedded constraint solver must accommodate.
In this paper we list some goals and non-goals for an integration of
constraints and object oriented language features, outline previous
approaches to this integration, and describe the scheme we use in
Kaleidoscope'91, our object-oriented constraint imperative programming
language. Kaleidoscope'91 uses a class-based object model,
multi-methods, and constraint constructors to integrate cleanly the
encapsulation and abstraction of a state-of-the-art object-oriented
language with the declarative aspects of constraints.
full paper (pdf)
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