Abstraction

• Different problems require different amounts of data.
• For a particular problem, some data may be relevant whilst other data may not
• Abstraction is concerned with analyzing a real world situation or object and filtering out all the data or characteristics which are not important
• Consider a street directory. It only contains the important data needed to serve the directory's purpose. It does not contain unimportant data such as the number blades of grass in each street
• When modeling real world objects only the important characteristics need to be incorporated into the model.
• The concept of abstraction can also be applied when using existing objects in an object oriented system
• The details of how the object is implemented are not important for being able to use that object
• For example think of television set. Do you need to know the inner working of the TV in order to use it? No the detail of the TV's inside have been abstracted way.