Inheritance & Polymorphism

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 Objectives
• Explain the concept of inheritance and its
significance.

• Explain the concept of polymorphism and its

significance.

• To implement inheritance and polymorphism in Java.

• Use access modifiers on classes.

• Explain how constructors are used in inheritance

hierarchies.
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 Overview
• Subdivided into three sections:
– Inheritance: software reuse

– Polymorphism: Overriding Methods

– Effects of Inheritance: Constructors and

Access Modifiers

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 Overview
• Inheritance: software reuse

• Polymorphism: Overriding Methods

• Effects of Inheritance: Constructors and

Access Modifiers

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Inheritance

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 Inheritance Definition
• Inheritance is a mechanism wherein a new
class is derived from an already existing
class. It is a feature that represents “is-a”
relationship between classes.
• A class derived from another class is called a
subclass, whereas the class from which a
subclass is derived is called a superclass.
• Every object of a subclass is also an object
of the superclass. But the reverse is not
true.
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 Inheritance Examples

Superclass Subclass
Student GraduateStudent, UndergraduateStudent

Shape Circle, Triangle, Rectangle, Square

Loan CarLoan, MortgageLoan, EmergencyLoan

Employee Faculty, Staff

BankAccount FixedDepositAccount, SavingsAccount

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 Inheritance Significance
• Inheritance is a form of software reuse: a new
class is created by absorbing an existing class’s
members and adding more capabilities. This allows
programmers to share code and software in the
form of classes packaged together.

• With inheritance, programmers save time during

program development by reusing proven and
debugged high quality software (classes).
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 Inheritance Problem
• One problem with inheritance is that a
subclass can inherit methods that it does not
need or should not have.

• Sometimes methods need to be customized

to be appropriate. Polymorphism comes in
to solve this problem

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 Class Demo

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 Class Work (15 Minutes)

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 Overview
• Inheritance: software reuse

• Polymorphism: Overriding Methods

• Effects of Inheritance: Constructors and

Access Modifiers

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Polymorphism

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 Polymorphism Definition
• Polymorphism is an OOP concept that enables a sub class to
modify the behaviors (methods) of the super class to suite
its own convenience. This is process is known as overriding
behaviors.

• Therefore, the same method called by different objects has

“many forms” of results – hence the term polymorphism.

• The only condition is that the new classes must be part of

the inheritance hierarchy. Polymorphism is built on
inheritance.
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 Polymorphism Significance
• With polymorphism, we can make design and
implement systems that are easily extensible.

• New classes can be added with little or no

modification to the general portions of the entire
program that uses the classes.

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 Class Demo

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 Class Work (15 Minutes)

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 Overview
• Inheritance: software reuse

• Polymorphism: Overriding Methods

• Effects of Inheritance: Constructors and

Access Modifiers

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Effects of Inheritance

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 Effects of Inheritance
1. Constructors
2. Access modifiers

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 Initializing superclass
members
• Superclass’s constructors are not inherited
by its subclasses.
• In order to initialize the instance variables
inherited from the superclass properly, each
subclass’s constructor should call the
superclass’s constructor either explicitly or
implicitly.
• keyword super is used to call the
superclass’s constructor
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Keywords: super and this

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 Keyword: super
• Members of a subclass (mostly methods) can
execute members of the superclass b
through the keyword super and a dot (.)
separator.
• When a subclass method overrides a
superclass method, the superclass method
can be accessed from the subclass by
preceding the superclass method name with
keyword super.

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 Keyword: super & this
super this
Used to access members of the Used to access members of the
parent class (super-class) current class

Mostly used in overriding Mostly used in initialization

Suppose you have a function in Suppose the local variables of a
the current class (sub-class) that function have the same name as
has the same name and the instance variables of that
parameters as another function class. This is used to refer to the
in the parent class (super-class). instance variables of the class.
Super is used to refer to the
function in the parent class,
while this is used to refer to the
function in the current class.

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Access Modifiers and Inheritance

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 Protected Access Modifier

Class A Class B extends A Object of Class B

(Superclass) (Subclass)

Public Members Inherited and Contains and

Accessible Accessible
Protected Members Inherited and Contains but NOT
Accessible Accessible

Private Members Inherited but NOT Contains but NOT

Accessible Accessible

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 Class Exercise (5 Minutes)
Write down the output of the following codes

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 Class Exercise (5 Minutes)
Write down the output of the following codes

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 Class Exercise (5 Minutes)

Identify the errors in

the following codes

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 Class Exercise (5 Minutes)

Write down the output

of the following codes

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 Assignment

• Differentiate between inheritance and

composition relationships

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 References

• P.J. Deitel and H.M. Deitel (2007), Java How

to Program. 7th Edition. Pearson Education
Inc.

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