Eiffel Assertions and the External Structure of Classes and Objects

The “external structure” in an object oriented system refers here to the graphs of objects and classes. The class structure graph or class model is derived from the object structure graph or object model, and in this operation structural information is lost, or never made explicit. Although object oriented programming languages capture the class model as declarations, contradictory assumptions about object model properties may be made introducing faults into the design. Consistent assumptions about the object model can be specified in the code using assertions such as Eiffel’s invariants, preconditions and postconditions. Three examples specifying the external structure are considered.