2.3.1 Preamble

The J/Link classes are written in an object-oriented style intended to maximize their extensibility in the future without requiring users' code to change. This requires a clean separation between interface and implementation. This is accomplished by exposing the main link functionality through interfaces, not classes. The names of the concrete classes that implement these interfaces will hardly be mentioned because programmers do not need to know or care what they are. Rather, you will use objects that belong to one of the interface types. You do not need to know what the actual classes are because you will never create an instance directly; instead, you use a "factory method" to create an instance of a link class. This will become clear further on.

This section gives a brief overview of the main interfaces and classes. They will be discussed in more detail later. In addition, there is full JavaDoc documentation for the J/Link classes and interfaces in the JLink/Documentation/JavaDoc directory. The JavaDoc files are the main function-level documentation. This manual concentrates mainly on higher-level topics in J/Link programming.