Attributes (OOM)

An attribute is a named property of a class (or an interface) describing its characteristics.

An attribute can be created for a class or interface in the following diagrams:

A class or an interface may have none or several attributes. Each object in a class has the same attributes, but the values of the attributes may be different.

Attribute names within a class must be unique. You can give identical names to two or more attributes only if they exist in different classes.

In the following example, the class Printer contains two attributes: printspeed and laser:

Interface Attributes

An attribute of an interface is slightly different from an attribute of a class because an interface can only have constant attributes (static and frozen). For example, consider an interface named Color with three attributes RED, GREEN, and BLUE. They are all static, final and frozen.

If you generate in Java, you see:

public interface Color
{
 public static final int RED = 0xFF0000;
 public static final int GREEN = 0x00FF00;
 public static final int BLUE = 0x0000FF;
}

All these attributes are constants because they are static (independent from the instances), final (they can not be overloaded), and frozen (their value cannot be changed).

You can use the attributes of other interfaces or classes and add them to the current interface.

• Creating an Attribute
  You can create an attribute as follows:
• Attribute Properties
  You can modify an object's properties from its property sheet. To open an attribute property sheet, double-click its Browser entry in the Attributes folder.
• Adding Getter and Setter Operations to a Classifier
  Getter or Setter operations are special types of operations you create for an attribute. You create them for sending and receiving data values between attributes of a class or of an interface.
• Copying an Attribute to a Class, Interface, or Identifier
  You can duplicate an attribute from one classifier to another. If the classifier already contains an attribute with the same name or code as the copied attribute, the copied attribute is renamed. For example the attribute PERIPHLD is renamed into PERIPHLD2 when it is copied to a class which already contains an attribute PERIPHLD.
• Overriding an Attribute in PowerBuilder
  The Inherited Attributes dialog box allows you to: