The Open Group Architectural Framework ◾ 103
◾ Encapsulation—An object consists of data and the programs (or methods) that manipulate
it.
◾ Types or classes—A class is a collection of similar objects.
◾ Inheritance—Subclasses inherit data attributes and methods from classes.
◾ Overriding with late binding—e method particular to a subclass can override the method
of a class at runtime.
◾ Extensibility—e.g., a user may define new objects.
◾ Computational completeness—A general-purpose language, such as Ada, C, or C++, is
computationally complete. e special-purpose language SQL is not. Most OODBMSs
incorporate a general-purpose programming language.
Flat Files
A flat file system is usually closely associated with a storage access method. An e ...