2008/06/29 by Alexandr Savinov, Savinov, Alexandr
Computer Science · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Logic, programming, and type systems #Programming Languages (cs.PL) #Semantic Web and Ontologies #Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0806.4746
openalex publication_date 2008/06/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is aimed at describing the structure and behaviour of objects by hiding the mechanism of their representation and access in primitive references. In this article we describe an approach, called concept-oriented programming (COP), which focuses on modelling references assuming that they also possess application-specific structure and behaviour accounting for a great deal or even most of the overall program complexity. References in COP are completely legalized and get the same status as objects while the functions are distributed among both objects and references. In order to support this design we introduce a new programming construct, called concept, which generalizes conventional classes and concept inclusion relation generalizing class inheritance. The main advantage of COP is that it allows programmers to describe two sides of any program: explicitly used functions of objects and intermediate functionality of references having cross-cutting nature and executed implicitly behind the scenes during object access.