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System Architecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems, First Edition
book

System Architecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems, First Edition

by Daniel Selva, Bruce Cameron, Edward Crawley
April 2015
Intermediate to advanced
480 pages
21h 24m
English
Pearson
Content preview from System Architecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems, First Edition

3.4 Special Logical Relationships

The Class/Instance Relationship

Another tool that helps us understand and manage complexity is the class/instance relationship. The term “class/instance relationship” is more commonly used in software than in hardware. A class is a construct that describes the general features of something, and an instance is a specific occurrence of the class. The instance is often referred to as the instantiation of the class.

The idea of class/instance is quite common. For example, if we referred to a model of a car (say, a Ford Explorer), that is the class, and an instance would be a specific Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). A part number refers to a class, and a serial number refers to an instance. In many computer languages, ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780136462989