Association, Aggregation, and Composition

Difference between Association, Aggregation, and Composition?

Association is a (*a*) relationship between two classes, where one class use another. But aggregation describes a special type of an association. Aggregation is the (*the*) relationship between two classes. When object of one class has an (*has*) object of another, if second is a part of first (containment relationship) then we called that there is an aggregation between two classes. Unlike association, aggregation always insists a direction.

public class University

{

   private Chancellor  universityChancellor = new Chancellor();

}

In this case I can say that University aggregate Chancellor or University has an (*has-a*)Chancellor. But even without a Chancellor a University can exists. But the Faculties cannot exist without the University, the life time of a Faculty (or Faculties) attached with the life time of the University . If University is disposed the Faculties will not exist. In that case we called that University is composed of Faculties. So that composition can be recognized as a special type of an aggregation.

Same way, as another example, you can say that, there is a composite relationship in-between aKeyValuePairCollection and a KeyValuePair. The two mutually depend on each other.

.NET and Java uses the Composite relation to define their Collections. I have seen Composition is being used in many other ways too. However the more important factor, that most people forget is the life time factor. The life time of the two classes that has bond with a composite relation mutually depend on each other. If you take the .NET Collection to understand this, there you have the Collection element define inside (it is an inner part, hence called it is composed of) the Collection, farcing the Element to get disposed with the Collection. If not, as an example, if you define the Collection and it’s Element to be independent, then the relationship would be more of a type Aggregation, than a Composition. So the point is, if you want to bind two classes with Composite relation, more accurate way is to have a one define inside the other class (making it a protected or private class). This way you are allowing the outer class to fulfill its purpose, while tying the lifetime of the inner class with the outer class.

So in summary, we can say that aggregation is a special kind of an association and composition is a special kind of an aggregation. (Association->Aggregation->Composition)