It's interesting (if perhaps a little more wordy than necessary). And I don't agree with all of it (more of that later). But their characterisation of the relationship between the User's mental model and the Object model represented in software is spot on. But perhaps more interesting is their questioning of one of OO's central tenets: that all behaviour belongs in Objects (or Classes in programme language terms).
They assert that, whilst some behaviour does belong within the Object, much doesn't. To use their example: responsibility for increasing or decreasing an Account's balance properly lies with the Account. External parties can ask the Account to perform those operations, but it's up to the Account to do it. That's fully in line with the principles of Abstract Data Types on which OO is founded.
But what about performing a Transfer of funds from one Account to another? Where does that belong? Reenskaug and Coplien assert this doesn't belong with the Account Object - I agree. But that's how it would typically be handled in today's OO languages; so the Account class would typically have a method named "transferTo()", used as follows:
Account src;
Account dest;
src.transferTo(dest, 20.00);
What's wrong with that? From a mental model perspective, it doesn't work. When I think about transferring funds, I don't think about the responsibility lying with either the source or destination account. Sure they're both involved, but neither is responsible.
So where does it belong? In OOP terms we have nowhere else to put it other than in a Class. Reenskaug and Coplien suggest the notion of Interactions as first class entities; however their model still portrays an asymetric pattern (i.e. the responsibility for executing the transfer still lies with either the source or destination objects).
I prefer to think about it lying outside of either. But that doesn't mean the OO model is broken. Maybe it's just the way we use it today. Coming back again to the code example above:
src.transferTo(dest);
Now what happens if we look at this from a relationship perspective? What's the nature of the relationship? It's pretty obvious there's some link between the source and destination accounts - even if it's only transient. Here's an initial view as a UML class diagram?
Both source and destination are instances of Account, so the relationship would have to be recursive on Account. OK. Naming the ends? Easy; one is source, the other destination. Cardinality? Hmm, that's a bit more difficult. A given transfer has exactly one source and one destination account; and any account can be the source and/or target for many transfers. But we can't represent that on our relationship:- 1:1 would only allow each account to be related to a single other: i.e. at most one transfer.
- many:many would only allow each account to be related to every other; but for every pair there could only be one transfer. Again, not what we need.
Each Account may be the transfer source of one or more other Accounts Each Account may be the transfer destination of one or more other Accounts
Kinda works, but it looks clumsy; it smells bad. So the cardinality doesn't work and the relationship naming is ugly. What does that tell us? Maybe there's no relationship? Well that's not true. It may be transient but both accounts are undeniably involved in something - otherwise there's no transfer.
Transfer. Hmm. What if, rather than looking at transfer as a verb, we treat it as a noun? What would that mean? Let's rework the model:
Let's examine the relationships again:Each Transfer must debit exactly one Account
Each Account may be debited in one or more Transfers
An Account need not be debited in any Transfers
Each Transfer must credit exactly one Account
Each Account may be credited in one or more Transfers
An Account need not be credited in any Transfers
That's much better. The cardinality and phrasing capture exactly what we're trying to express - so the relationships look OK. But what about that "Transfer" class? Is it a proper class? Well, what does it mean to be a "proper" class?
It's definitely an abstraction of behaviour - the transfer behaviour. What's more, it's a well encapsulated abstraction of behaviour. We are not loading the Account class with the responsibility for executing transfers; it need only respond to "credit" and "debit" requests: appropriate since it maintains the account balance.
What about state? That's OK too. The transfer value again properly belongs with the Transfer. We could also, if required, capture details of the time and success/failure of each transaction. Finally, we could, if required, track the state of each Transfer as it executes ("debiting source account", "crediting destination account", "completed successfully", ...).
There are critics of this approach who disagree with the idea of reification - treating behaviour as things. Rather, objects should be tangible things: Accounts, Customers, Chairs, Telephones, whatever - the things that are things in the real world.
The trouble is that doing so causes the situation that leads to a.transferTo(b). In fact, most of the interesting behaviour doesn't happen in the tangible objects. Transfer is an example of an Interaction object; one that coordinates a protocol amongst other objects. Interaction objects are useful and interesting precisely because they enable clean abstraction of behaviour amongst a number of other objects.
So is the OO model broken? No, not really. We just need to learn to use it properly. Going back to Coplien and Reenskaug, maybe it would help to promote Interactions to first class status, and hence increase focus on collaborations. Key to that is learning to love relationships - they're where all the fun happens.
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