Question

I’m reading some books about Design Patterns and while some describe the relation between the abstraction and the implementation as a composition, some describe it as an aggregation. Now I wonder: is this dependant on the implementation? On the language? Or context?

Answer 1

The terms “composition” and “aggregation” mean more or less the same thing and may be used interchangeably. Aggregation may be used more frequently when describing container classes such as lists, dynamic arrays, maps, and queues where the elements are all of the same type; however, both terms may be found to describe classes defined in terms of other classes, regardless of whether those types are homogenous (all of the same type) or heterogenous (objects of different types).

To make this clearer:

class Car {
    // ...
    private:
        Engine engine;
        Hood hood;
};

// The car is *composed* of an engine and a hood. Hence, composition. You are
// also bringing together (i.e. *aggregating*) an engine and hood into a car.

The relationship between abstraction and implementation typically implies inheritance, rather than composition/aggregation; typically the abstraction is an interface or virtual base class, and the implementation is a fully concrete class that implements the given interface. But, to make things confusing, composition/aggregation can be a part of the interface (because, for example, you may need to set/get the objects that are used as building blocks), and they are also an approach to implementation (because you might use delegation to provide the definition for methods in your implementation).

To make this clearer:

interface Car {
    public Engine getEngine();
    public Hood getHood();
    public void drive();
}
// In the above, the fact that a car has these building blocks
// is a part of its interface (the abstraction).

class HondaCivic2010 implements Car {
    public void drive(){ getEngine().drive(); }
    // ...
}
// In the above, composition/delegation is an implementation
// strategy for providing the drive functionality.

Since you have tagged your question “bridge”, I should point out that the definition of the bridge pattern is a pattern where you use composition rather than inheritance to allow for variation at multiple different levels. An example that I learned at college… using inheritance you might have something like:

class GoodCharacter;
class BadCharacter;
class Mage;
class Rogue;
class GoodMage : public GoodCharacter, Mage;
class BadMage : public BadCharacter, Mage;
class GoodRogue : public GoodCharacter, Rogue;
class BadRogue : public BadCharacter, Rogue;

As you can see, this kind of thing goes pretty crazy, and you get a ridiculous number of classes. The same thing, with the bridge pattern, would look like:

 class Personality;
 class GoodPersonality : public Personality;
 class BadPersonality : public Personality;

 class CharacterClass;
 class Mage : public CharacterClass;
 class Rogue : public CharacterClass;

 class Character {
    public:
        // ...
    private:
        CharacterClass character_class;
        Personality personality;
 };
 // A character has both a character class and a personality.
 // This is a perfect example of the bridge pattern, and we've
 // reduced MxN classes into a mere M+N classes, and we've
 // arguably made the system even more flexible than before.