Beginning PL/SQL: From Novice to Professional

CHAPTER 10Fairy Tales

Polymorphism is the subject of this chapter. No, it's not some kind of New Age religion; it's about using the same message (or command) in order to get the same result, but for different kinds of objects. Let's look at a simple example. Figure 10-1 shows the use of the command draw() for three different geometric shapes: a square, a triangle, and a circle.

Figure 10-1. An example of polymorphic command use with different objects

Although the three geometric shapes in Figure 10-1 are different objects, using the same command, you can communicate what you want each object to do, and the object knows how to do it.

The polymorphic ...