Question

Give two advantages to hiding representation details using objects?

Answer 1

Definition for the concepts of data hiding:

Hiding representation details using objects can happen using the Abstraction concept in Object oriented programming language. Abstraction can be achieved using the concepts encapsulation and inheritance concepts.

Abstraction: It is a concept in which only the essential details are represented and non-essential details are hidden.

Encapsulation: In this concept the data is wrapped just like in a capsule and is hidden from all the other classes. This data can only be accessed by the methods that are defined in the same class.

Inheritance: In this a parent child relationship is being set between different objects. The child object acquires the properties of the parent object and can use the data and methods of the parent object all with its own data and methods.

Two advantages of hiding representation details using objects are:

1. It reduces the complexity of the data that is used to represent the different objects. As it reduces complexity, it becomes easy to reuse the code, making it more efficient. Hiding helps to define the interfaces between different objects making it more easy to understand and readable and legible. It is easy to modify the data in the class as it does not affect the other objects as the objects are decoupled from each other. It helps in reducing the data redundancy as the data that is required in more than one object can be written once in an object and then it can be inherited by other objects as well by creating the parent-child relationship.

2. As the data is hidden from the outside environment therefore it provides security to the data of that particular class as no other class is able to access that data until and unless the public access is provided to that data. Also as they are bundled in the same unit or the capsule called class, therefore it becomes easy to manage them and maintain them. The objects can be written once and can be used again and again on different platforms increasing their reusability.