Question

What is association,aggregation,composition in c++?

Answer 1

Answer:

Association, Aggregation and Composition are terms that represent relationships among objects. They are very basic stuff of Object Oriented Programming.

Association is a relationship among the objects. Association is "*a*" relationship among objects. In Association, the relationship among the objects determine what an object instance can cause another to perform an action on its behalf. We can also say that an association defines the multiplicity among the objects. We can define a one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one and many-to-many relationship among objects. Association is a more general term to define a relationship among objects. Association means that an object "uses" another object.

Aggregation is a special type of Association. Aggregation is "*the*" relationship among objects. We can say it is a direct association among the objects. In Aggregation, the direction specifies which object contains the other object. There are mutual dependencies among objects.

Composition is special type of Aggregation. It is a strong type of Aggregation. In this type of Aggregation the child object does not have their own life cycle. The child object's life depends on the parent's life cycle. Only the parent object has an independent life cycle. If we delete the parent object then the child object(s) will also be deleted. We can define the Composition as a "Part of" relationship.