Subclasses - Multimedia Introduction to Programming Using Java - page 156

associate professor
assistant professor
staff member
secretary
technician
janitor
alumni
The indentation used above is used to describe the is-a relation. For exam-
ple, the three lines indented underneath the entry staff member indicate that a sec-
retary is a staff member, a technician is a staff member, and a janitor is a staff
member. Also, a student is a university member, a professor is a faculty member
is a university member, and so on.
The is-a relation is fundamental in dealing with subclasses: if c is a b , then
when constructing classes, we make C a subclass of class B . For example, sup-
pose we write a class for each of the objects in this hierarchy. Then, class
UniversityMember has no superclass (except Object ). Class Student is a sub-
class of UniversityMember , Professor is a subclass of FacultyMember , and so
on. So, we have a general guideline:
Make a class B a subclass of class C if each instance of B is a C .
Commonality of behavior
We explain why we structure classes and subclasses according to the is-a
relation, using students as an example. The three kinds of students share common
behavior, which will be reflected in the instance methods in class Student . For
example, all students have a name, so there will probably be a method to get this
name. And they pay tuition. Method getName may be defined in class Student ,
but all university members have names, so the method is better defined in
UniversityMember and inherited in class Student . Only students pay tuition, so
method payTuition will be defined in class Student .
Thus, we have the following principle:
Subclass principle : Structure classes so that behavior that is
common to several classes can be defined in a superclass of those
classes.
Sometimes, we insert new classes to make better use of this guideline. For
example, all faculty and staff get pay, so we may decide to insert a new class,
Employee , so that method getPay may be placed in it.