Data processing apparatus, method and computer program product facilitating polymorphic behaviour from static object interfaces

摘要

A data processing apparatus which carries out data processing using an object-oriented programming software architecture having two inheritance hierarchies one of which is a static class hierarchy and the other of which is a non-static class hierarchy, is disclosed, the apparatus having: a means for receiving method calls on a static class of a static hierarchy, each method call requesting that a particular method be processed by the data processing apparatus; and a means for using a static pointer in the static class to redirect a received method call to an instance of a non-static class of the non-static hierarchy, wherein the instance provides the implementation of the method requested in the received method call. <IMAGE>