Associations inherited from superclass?

[pebran]

Do subclasses inherit associations made to the superclass? Does it make a difference whether or not the superclass is abstract?

An example:
‘Fruit’ is an abstract class.
The class ‘Fruit’ has two subclasses ‘Banana’ and ‘Strawberry’
The class ‘FruitBowl’ has association ‘contains’ to the class ‘Fruit’

Does this mean that ‘FruitBowl’ contains ‘Banana’ and ‘Strawberry’?
Or do I have to make separate associations to each of Fruits subclasses

[Andreas_G]

Hi pebran,

inheritance is defined in that way, that subclasses inherit all properties of your base class.

In your case it's enough to have an association to your class 'Fruit'.
That means that 'FruitBowl' can contain all kinds of Fruits. The problem is, that you don't know the exact type of your fruits in 'FruitBowl'. But that is an other story.

If you create a seperate acossiation to each of your subclasses, that means your 'FruitBowl' class has a seperate attribute for each subclass. If you create a new kind of 'Fruit', you have also to change the class 'FruitBowl'. And I'm sure, that's not that what you want to have.

bye
Andreas

[pebran]

Hi Andreas

Well, I did knew that a subclass inherits the properties of the superclass. Just didn't knew that associations should be seen as properties.

Thanks,
Peter

[sargasso]

Just consider what the association means in a concrete sense and you will see why it is inherited.
B