'Is a' Relationship in Conceptual Model

[mehdihadeli]

Hi,
I have a question about your Conceptual model,
Why in this model Member has an Is a relationship to User?
Our Member class not inherits from User directly and my question is why you use this 'is a' relationship here

[kgrzybek]

Hi @mehdihadeli

In Conceptual Model you model your concepts on higher level of abstraction without thinking about Object-Oriented Design / Functional Programming / other programming paradigm. You don't think about software, you model your business concepts.

So "is a" term it is not "inheritance" from the OOD paradigm. It is just a description of relation in non-programming language. The reason is that kind of model should be understandable for non-technical people as well.

In lower level (code) it could be modeled as you described (using inheritance) but it doesn't have to. Moreover, inheritance in general should be avoided (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_over_inheritance) because inheritance introduces the highest level of coupling between classes.

[mehdihadeli]

@kgrzybek Thanks for your guide.

[kgrzybek]

No problem, just "mark as answer" if it was helpful, please :)