WPS Objects versus SOM Objects
Please note that in this book, and in most other discussion of the Workplace
Shell, we use the word object in
two quite distinct, but closely related, senses:
A Workplace Shell object is something that a user
interacts with and manipulates, and is represented by an icon. It normally
represents some real-world item that the user understands, such as a printer
or an order form.
A SOM object is a programming construct and is the
basis of SOM's implementation of object-oriented programming (OOP). It
may represent something quite meaningless to the user such as a database
table, or an APPC conversation; fortunately, a user would not normally know
anything about SOM objects.
Workplace Shell objects are implemented as SOM objects, but SOM objects
do not necessarily have anything to do with Workplace Shell; indeed a SOM
object may not have any visible form at all, being no more than a piece
of program code and data.
It should normally be clear from the context which sense of the word object
is intended.
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