RE: [ubl-ndrsc] XML and Polymorphism

[A Gregory <agregory@aeon-llc.com>]

Eve:

I've always heard Java interfaces discussed as not really implementing
"multiple inheritance". Is this the same thing as "polymorphism" in your
sense of it?

I agree that "polymorphism" is potentially confusing, but I always thought
it was somebody else's fait-accompli. What else should we call it, to be
clearer?

Cheers,

Arofan

-----Original Message-----
From: Eve L. Maler [mailto:eve.maler@sun.com]
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 8:09 AM
To: A Gregory
Cc: UBL NDR
Subject: Re: [ubl-ndrsc] XML and Polymorphism


Sorry to have sounded accusatory!  I didn't mean it that way.  But I do
think you'll find that presenting the concept under this banner will
confuse a lot of ordinary programmers...  Most programming languages
don't offer true polymorphism because it's very hard.  Java sort of has
it, but cheats by making you do all the work of mapping to multiple
classes (with interfaces).

	Eve

A Gregory wrote:
> Eve:
>
> In my experience, the term "polymorphism" is actually used this way pretty
> often among the tiny community of those who care ;-)
>
> The way Matt Fuch intended it was that, because an element could be
> identified to the processor with many different names (all of the names of
> its ancestors) it was 'polymorphic'. It makes sense if you think about
Java
> binding the way Matt Fuchs does, although it is certainly not immediately
> obvious how it is intended. Matt has presented on this subject to the OMG
> and in some other places, though, so don't blame me and eDuardo(!)
>
> Matt:
>
> Matthew Fuchs gave a presentation at the last XML 2002 conference
> (Baltimore), so his contact info should be in the proceedings. He's
working
> for a company that does something with security, if I remember right. I
> don't have my copy of the proceedings, but somebody should, and I can look
> up his contact info when I get home (next week) if you don't find it
before
> then.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Arofan
>
>
>

--
Eve Maler                                        +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems                            cell +1 781 354 9441
Web Technologies and Standards               eve.maler @ sun.com


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