This preface describes who should read the Cisco SCA BB Service Configuration API Programmer Guide, how it is organized, and its document conventions.

This guide is for Java developers responsible for integrations involving tools that automatically configure the Service Control Application running on a Service Control Engine (SCE) platform.

Chapter 1 – SCA BB Service Configuration API Overview
Describes the various terms and concepts that are used when working with the Cisco SCA BB Service Configuration API (Service Configuration API).

Chapter 2 – Getting Started
Explains how to install, compile, and run the Service Configuration API.

Chapter 3 Programming with the SCA BB Service Configuration API
Provides a detailed description of the Service Configuration API programming structure and classes, and of methods of the main Service Configuration Management API class, and also contains programming guidelines and code examples.

Object Orientation

Object Orientation is the big new programming paradigm of these days. “COBOL 2000″ (see separate document for more details and other features planned for the new standard) will provide full support for the constructs of Object Oriented Programming (OOP). Superficially, the role of OOP in COBOL 2000 is similar to that of Structured Programming in COBOL 85. There is, however, a very important difference: While Structured Programming was meant to be an alternative to traditional, “spaghetti-oriented” programming, believed to be simply a better programming style, OOP will not replace conventional programming, but will be used just for specific programming tasks, for which it is better suited. Traditional COBOL programming will not go away, but will be complemented by new language features for defining classes and objects .

In his keynote address to the 11th World Computer Congress in 1989, renowned computer scientist Donald Knuth said that one of the most important lessons he had learned from his years of experience is that software is hard to write! Computer scientists have struggled for decades to design new languages and techniques for writing software. Unfortunately, experience has shown that writing large systems is virtually impossible. Small programs seem to be no problem, but scaling to large systems with large programming teams can result in $100M projects that never work and are thrown out. The only solution seems to lie in writing small software units that communicate via well-defined interfaces and protocols like computer chips. The units must be small enough that one developer can understand them entirely and, perhaps most importantly, the units must be protected from interference by other units so that programmers can code the units in isolation.

Why Objective-C?

The Objective-C language was chosen for the Cocoa frameworks for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it’s an object-oriented language. The kind of functionality that’s packaged in the Cocoa frameworks can only be delivered through object-oriented techniques. This document explains the operation of the frameworks and how you can take advantage of them. Second, because Objective-C is an extension of standard ANSI C, existing C programs can be adapted to use the software frameworks without losing any of the work that went into their original development. Since Objective-C incorporates C, you get all the benefits of C when working within Objective-C. You can choose when to do something in an object-oriented way (define a new class, for example) and when to stick to procedural programming techniques (define a structure and some functions instead of a class).

Abstract

Bounded quantification was introduced by Cardelli and Wegner as a means of typing functions that operate uniformly over all subtypes of a given type. They defined a simple “object” model and used bounded quantification to type-check functions that make sense on all objects having a specified set of “attributes.” A more realistic presentation of object-oriented languages would allow objects that are elements of recursively-defined types. In this context, bounded quantification no longer serves its intended purpose. It is easy to find functions that makes sense on all objects having a specified set of methods, but which cannot be typed in the Cardelli-Wegner system. To provide a basis for typed polymorphic functions in object-oriented languages, we introduce F-bounded quantification. Some applications of F-bounded quantification are presented and semantic issues are discussed. Although our original motivation was to type polymorphic functions over objects, F-bounded quantification is a general form of polymorphism that seems useful whenever recursive type definitions and subtyping are used.

1. Introduction
   What is object oriented programming? Why do we need object-oriented. Programming characteristics of object-oriented languages. C and C++.
2. C++ Programming basics
   Output using cout. Directives. Input with cin. Type bool. The setw manipulator. Type conversions.
3. Functions
   Returning values from functions. Reference arguments. Overloaded function. Inline function. Default arguments. Returning by reference.
4. Object and Classes
   Making sense of core object concepts (Encapsulation, Abstraction, Polymorphism, Classes, Messages Association, Interfaces) Implementation of class in C++, C++ Objects as physical object, C++ object as data types constructor. Object as function arguments. The default copy constructor, returning object from function. Structures and classes. Classes objects and memory static class data. Const and classes.
5. Arrays and string arrays fundamentals. Arrays as class Member Data.
   Arrays of object, string. The standard C++ String class
6. Operator overloading
   Overloading unary operators. Overloading binary operators, data conversion, pitfalls of operators overloading and conversion keywords. Explicit and Mutable.