May 2003
Intermediate to advanced
576 pages
17h 17m
English
abstraction: A term in a notational system or other information artifact that is defined with reference to the primitive concepts of the system, or with reference to other abstractions that are ultimately defined by primitives. It is frequently used to aggregate many instances, so that all can be manipulated by a single action; thus, a heading style is a typical word-processor abstraction defined in terms of font properties, and all its instances can be altered by altering its definition.
abstraction hierarchy: A hierarchical description of the functional structure of a work domain, in which work-domain purposes are related to underlying physical structures. Also referred to as a structural means-ends hierarchy because links between ...