SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CLASS TRANSITIONING

摘要

A method and system for on-the-fly transitioning of a class in an object-oriented environment receives a request for an instance of a class, wherein the class includes attributes that it is a class and further includes an interface class associated with the class. The requested instance checks with a class manager to determine if it has been superceded and transitions if necessary until it determines that it is the most recent instance of the class. The most recent instance is returned and then saved to the system upon the first occurrence. Upon a subsequence occurrence of a requested instance determining it has been superceded, the requested instance returns the saved most recent instance of the class. The requested instance transitions to the superceding instance by converting all attributes, associations and operations of the requested instance to the superceding class's attributes, associations and operations. The conversion is performed by the requested instance calling a default transition code as created by a meta model compiler or calling user-edited transition code.