A new interpretation of invariants exploiting layers in OO designs

Although invariants have a long history, their meaning in OO designs is still under discussion. OO designs often include functionality that is used by different objects (shared functionality). We identify a problem with current interpretations of invariants in such designs. OO designs are often layered, where a layer uses functionality of a lower layer (in particular, shared functionality) but has little or no involvement with higher layers. As a result, higher layers can rely on lower layer invariants and lower layers do not rely on higher layer invariants. This is not reflected by current interpretations of invariants. We propose to make layers explicit in specifications and introduce a new interpretation of invariants that exploits these layers.