06-06-2013, 02:25 PM
MODERN APPLICATIONS OF OBJECT-ORIENTED LANGUAGES
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ABSTRACT
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) has been evolving over the decades; it was not until recently, however, that it gained prominence as a preferred methodology in many applications. This method of building computer applications has revolutionized the software industry. When the methodology is followed correctly, it saves time and money in development costs. Object-Oriented Languages are becoming increasingly popular for the development of software systems of all kinds, ranging from small web-based applications to large serve side applications. This paper gives an insight into Modern applications of Object-Oriented Languages. Five Object-Oriented Languages namely Smalltalk, Java, PHP, C++ and Python were chosen and five application domains considered.
INTRODUCTION
With introduction of graphical operating systems such as Windows, a new concept of programming has emerged. Programmers now design applications by putting together different pieces of already-written code that has been tested before, and each piece of code is called an “Object” [1]. Objects can have properties such as color, shape, size and data type. Because of underlying operating system behind it, its properties can be set rather than writing a lot of code. Not only that, one can create an application with an underlying database behind it, using all pre-programmed templates based upon the structure of the database.
Programming with objects is quite like working with real-world objects. Object-Oriented Programming brings this same level of abstraction to programming and helps remove some of the impediments to building larger systems.
Modern Object-Oriented Languages contain features such as exception handling, dynamic binding, extensive control of visibility and threads. Although, these features add to languages’ expressive power and provide many benefits from a software engineering point of view.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Object-Oriented Development
Object-Oriented systems development is an extension of structured programming. Object-Oriented development emphasizes the benefits of modular and reusable computer code and modeling real-world objects. Object-Oriented Programming is 95% philosophy and 5% technology [4].What object technology promotes is the ability to build applications by selecting and assembling objects from libraries. If a developer must create a missing objects to meet the application’s requirements, the new object may be placed in a library for reuse in future applications. For many simple systems, the developer may use the available objects to form the entire application instead of writing code. More complex development efforts require the developer to modify the objects to meet specific requirements.
Object Orientation is much more than a way to program. It can apply across every system development activity, including requirements analysis, design, testing and business process reengineering. Developing an Object-Oriented application requires even more thought about the design than developing in the traditional structured programming environment, because the focus on future reuse requires a longer-term view during analysis and design. However, a well-stocked library of reusable components reduces the need to perform original analysis and design.
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor)
Originally known as Personal Home Page is an extremely popular application development language for general usage although it was created specifically for web development. PHP is a server-side scripting language, especially suited for the creation of dynamic web pages [7].
The dynamic content could be anything from a simple GIF image to an entirely customized web page rich with features ranging from basic HTML all the way to graphically intensive interactive flash.
In general, it has the syntax similar to the syntax of C, Java and Perl. Modern versions of PHP are object-oriented just as modern versions of C/C++ are.
Remarkably, there isn’t an official Integrated Development Environment (IDE) such as Visual C++ for PHP, but there are numerous third party products ranging from color coding code-aware advanced text editors to unofficial IDEs [8]. This may be due to the platform agnostic nature of PHP.
Since PHP was designed to create dynamic and more interactive web pages, it is the most widely used open source and general-purpose scripting language. PHP code in a script can interact with databases, create images, read and write files and talk to remote servers. So the output from PHP code is combined with HTML in script and the result is sent to the user as a web page. Both the PHP engine and the PHP can be used on any platform which makes PHP extremely flexible. PHP is used mainly in server-side scripting, command line interface and writing desktop applications. PHP also supports ODBC, the Open database Connection Standard which allows you to connect to other databases supporting this world standard. PHP is especially strong in relational databases, which are used for dynamic content and e-commerce applications.
CONCLUSION
Object-oriented languages contain features that add to their languages’ expressive power and these provide many benefits to software engineering.
We have seen so far from the ongoing that object-oriented languages have found diverse applications in the modern world and offer new and powerful models for writing computer software, web developments, server-side applications, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) applications, Computer Simulation, Scientific and Numeric applications, Content Management Systems and so many application domains that I cannot cover in this paper.