subclassing

In object-oriented programming, a subclass (also referred to as subclassing) defines a class whose characteristics are inherited from one or more other classes (superclasses). Depending on the number of inheritance levels (number of classes between a subclass and a superclass) one speaks also of the direct or indirect subclasses of a class.

Application objects for subclasses consist of data objects and methods for manipulating the data objects. The methods for manipulating subclass application objects may not have been provided or modified in the original data object classes.