[Tutor] Usefulness of classes and necessity of inheriting classes

[Albert-Jan Roskam]

<snip until MIB ;-)>
 
 Another case in in Network management. Network management
 systems
 use what is called a MIB. A Management Information Base. The
 MIB
 is usually defined in terms of Managed Objects(MO). There is
 a
 standard protocol (a set of methods or API) that all MOs
 must
 adhere to. Specific types of network  elements
 (routers,
 switches, printers etc) all have their own specialist
 methods/features on top of the standard MO protocol.
 Specific
 models of router or printer will then have their own
 proprietary features on top of that again. So a MIB will
 typically have a deep inheritance stricture starting with
 MO,
 then a layer of generic devices(router, switch, printer
 etc)
 then a third layer of manufacturers models (eg. Cisco5300,
 HP Deskjet 4550, etc)
 
 When we come to add a new model of printer, say, to the MIB
 we want to minimize the coding so we inherit the generic
 printer
 object which will give us the generic MO protocol methods
 plus the generic printer features (out of paper/ink alarms
 etc)
 for free. We then implement the special features of that
 model (blue-tooth connection opened, banner printing mode
 selected
 etc). By only having to code the differences it is much
 easier
 to add new objects.
 

===> interesting. Is this (a) the same as or (b) similar to Abstract Base Classes (ABC) in Python?
 <snip>