Method resolution is the process of obtaining a pointer to the procedure that implements a particular method for a particular object at run time. The method is then invoked subsequently by calling that procedure, passing the method's intended receiver, the Environment pointer (if needed), the context argument (if needed), and the method's other arguments, if any. C and C++ programmers may wish to obtain a pointer to a method's procedure for efficient repeated invocations.
Obtaining a pointer to a method's procedure is achieved in one of two ways, depending on whether the method is to be resolved using offset resolution or name-lookup resolution. Obtaining a method's procedure pointer via offset resolution is faster, but it requires that the name of the class that introduces the method and the name of the method be known at compile time. It also requires that the method be defined as part of that class's interface in the IDL specification of the class. (See the topic "Method Resolution" in Chapter 4, "SOM IDL and the SOM Compiler" for more information on offset and name-lookup method resolution.)