Abstraction VS Information Hiding VS Encapsulation

Question

Can you tell me what is the difference between abstraction and information hiding in software development   I am confused  Abstraction hides detail implementation and information hiding abstracts whole details of something   Update  I found a good answer for these three concepts  See the separate answer below for several citations taken from there

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The OP updated his question with several citations that he had found, namely in an article by Edward V. Berard titled, "Abstraction, Encapsulation, and Information Hiding". I am re-posting a slightly expanded and reformatted version of the OP's update, since it should be an answer in its own right.

(All citations are taken from the article mentioned above.)

Abstraction:

"One point of confusion regarding abstraction is its use as both process and an entity. Abstraction, as a process, denotes the extracting of the essential details about an item, or a group of items, while ignoring the inessential details. Abstraction, as an entity, denotes a model, a view, or some other focused representation for an actual item."

Information Hiding:

"Its interface or definition was chosen to reveal as little as possible about its inner workings." — [Parnas, 1972b]

"Abstraction can be […] used as a technique for identifying which information should be hidden."

"Confusion can occur when people fail to distinguish between the hiding of information, and a technique (e.g., abstraction) that is used to help identify which information is to be hidden."

Encapsulation:

"It […] refers to building a capsule, in the case a conceptual barrier, around some collection of things." — [Wirfs-Brock et al, 1990]

"As a process, encapsulation means the act of enclosing one or more items within a […] container. Encapsulation, as an entity, refers to a package or an enclosure that holds (contains, encloses) one or more items."

"If encapsulation was 'the same thing as information hiding,' then one might make the argument that 'everything that was encapsulated was also hidden.' This is obviously not true."

Conclusion:

"Abstraction, information hiding, and encapsulation are very different, but highly-related, concepts. One could argue that abstraction is a technique that help us identify which specific information should be visible, and which information should be hidden. Encapsulation is then the technique for packaging the information in such a way as to hide what should be hidden, and make visible what is intended to be visible."

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Abstraction is hiding details of implementation as you put it   You abstract something to a high enough point that you ll only have to do something very simple to perform an action   Information hiding is hiding implementation details  Programming is hard  You can have a lot of things to deal with and handle  There can be variables you want need to keep very close track of  Hiding information ensures that no one accidentally breaks something by using a variable or method you exposed publicly   These 2 concepts are very closely tied together in object-oriented programming

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Encapsulation  binding the data members and member functions together is called              encapsulation  encapsulation is done through class  abstraction  hiding the  implementation details form usage or from view is called abstraction           ex              int x        we don t know how int will internally work  but we know int will work  that is abstraction

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Encapsulation  binding data and the methods that act on it  this allows the hiding of data from all other methods in other classes  example  MyList class that can add an item  remove an item  and remove all items  the methods add  remove  and removeAll act on the list a private array  that can not be accessed directly from the outside   Abstraction  is hiding the non relevant behavior and data  How the items are actually stored  added  or deleted is hidden  abstracted    My data may be held in simple array  ArrayList  LinkedList  and so on   Also  how the methods are implemented is hidden from the outside

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Abstraction   Abstraction is an act of representing essentail details without including the background details  A abstract class have only method signatures and implementing class can have its own implementation  in this way the complex details will be hidden from the user  Abstraction focuses on the outside view  In otherwords  Abstraction is sepration of interfaces from the actual implementation    Encapsulation  Encapsulation explains binding the data members and methods into a single unit  Information hiding is the main purpose of encapsulation  Encapsulation is acheived by using access specifiers like private  public  protected  Class member variables are made private so that they cann t be accessible directly to outside world  Encapsulation focuses on the inner view  In otherwords  Encapsulation is a technique used to protect the information in an object from the other object

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Encapsulation- enforcing access to the internal data in a controlled manner or preventing members from being accessed directly   Abstraction- Hiding the implementation details of certain methods is known as abstraction  Let s understand with the help of an example -  class Rectangle   private int length  private int breadth    see the word private that means they cant be accesed from  outside world     now to make them accessed indirectly define getters and setters methods void setLength int length         we are adding this condition to prevent users to make any irrelevent changes    that is why we have made length private so that they should be set according to     certain restrictions if length  0     this length length    void getLength      return length         same do for breadth     now for abstraction define a method that can only be accessed and user doesnt know  what is the body of the method and how it is working Let s consider the above example  we can define a method area which calculates the area of the rectangle    public int area        return length breadth       Now  whenever a user uses the above method he will just get the area not the way how it is calculated  We can consider an example of println   method we just know that it is used for printing and we don t know how it prints the data     I have written a blog in detail you can see the below link for more info abstraction vs encapsulation

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To abstract something we need to hide the detail or to hide the detail of something we need to abstract it   But  both of them can be achieved by encapsulation   So  information hiding is a goal  abstraction is a process  and encapsulation is a technique

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Abstraction   Abstraction is the concept technique used to identify what should be the external view of an object  Making only the required interface available   Information Hiding   It is complementary to Abstraction  as through information hiding Abstraction is achieved  Hiding everything else but the external view   Encapsulation   Is binding of data and related functions into a unit  It facilitates Abstraction and information hiding  Allowing features like member access to be applied on the unit to achieve Abstraction and Information hiding

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Abstraction is hiding the implementation details by providing a layer over the basic functionality   Information Hiding is hiding the data which is being affected by that implementation  Use of private and public comes under this  For example  hiding the variables of the classes   Encapsulation is just putting all similar data and functions into a group e g Class in programming  Packet in networking   Through the use of Classes  we implement all three concepts - Abstraction  Information Hiding and Encapsulation

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It s worth noting these terms have standardized  IEEE definitions  which can be searched at https   pascal computer org    abstraction   view of an object that focuses on the information relevant to a particular purpose and ignores the remainder of the information process of formulating a view process of suppressing irrelevant detail to establish a simplified model  or the result of that process   information hiding   software development technique in which each module s interfaces reveal as little as possible about the module s inner workings and other modules are prevented from using information about the module that is not in the module s interface specification containment of a design or implementation decision in a single module so that the decision is hidden from other modules   encapsulation   software development technique that consists of isolating a system function or a set of data and operations on those data within a module and providing precise specifications for the module concept that access to the names  meanings  and values of the responsibilities of a class is entirely separated from access to their realization idea that a module has an outside that is distinct from its inside  that it has an external interface and an internal implementation

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Just adding on more details around InformationHiding  found This link is really good source with examples  InformationHiding is the idea that a design decision should be hidden from the rest of the system to prevent unintended coupling  InformationHiding is a design principle  InformationHiding should inform the way you encapsulate things  but of course it doesn t have to  Encapsulation is a programming language feature

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Please don t complicate simple concepts   Encapsulation   Wrapping up of data and methods into a single unit is Encapsulation  e g  Class   Abstraction   It is an act of representing only the essential things without including background details   e g  Interface   FOR EXAMPLES AND MORE INFO GOTO    http   thecodekey com C VB Codes Encapsulation aspx  http   thecodekey com C VB Codes Abstraction aspx  Approved definitions here  P S   I also remember the definition from a book named C   by Sumita Arora which we read in 11th class

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I too was very confused about the two concepts of Abstraction and Encapsulation  But when I saw the abstraction article on myjavatrainer com  It became clear to me that Abstraction and Encapsulation are Apples and Oranges  you can t really compare them because both are required   Encapsulation is how the object is created  and abstraction is how the object is viewed in the outside world

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In very short  Encapsulation     Information hiding  Abstraction       Implementation hiding  Abstraction lets you focus on what the object does while Encapsulation means how an object works

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After reading all the above answers one by one I cant stop myself from posting that      abstraction involves the facility to define objects that represent abstract  actors  that can perform work  report on and change their state  and  communicate  with other objects in the system    Encapsulation is quite clear from above however -      The term encapsulation refers to the hiding of state details  but extending the concept of data type from earlier programming languages to associate behavior most strongly with the data  and standardizing the way that different data types interact  is the beginning of abstraction    reference wiki

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The meaning of abstraction given by the Oxford English Dictionary  OED  closest to the meaning intended here is  The act of separating in thought   A better definition might be  Representing the essential features of something without including background or inessential detail    Information hiding is the principle that users of a software component  such as a class  need to know only the essential details of how to initialize and access the component  and do not need to know the details of the implementation   Edit  I seems to me that abstraction is the process of deciding which parts of the implementation that should be hidden    So its not abstraction VERSUS information hiding  It s information hiding VIA abstraction

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Abstraction -  It is the process of identifying the essential characteristics of an object                    without including the irrelevant and tedious details   Encapsulation - It is the process of enclosing data and functions manipulating this data into a single unit    Abstraction and Encapsulation are related but complementary concepts    Abstraction is the process  Encapsulation is the mechanism by which Abstraction is implemented    Abstraction focuses on the observable behavior of an object  Encapsulation focuses upon the implementation that give rise to this behavior    Information Hiding - It is the process of hiding the implementation details of an object  It is a result of Encapsulation

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Go to the source  Grady Booch says  in Object Oriented Analysis and Design  page 49  second edition       Abstraction and encapsulation are complementary concepts  abstraction   focuses on the observable behavior of an object    encapsulation   focuses upon the implementation that gives rise to this behavior      encapsulation is most often achieved through information hiding  which   is the process of hiding all of the secrets of object that do not   contribute to its essential characteristics    In other words  abstraction   the object externally  encapsulation  achieved through information hiding    the object internally   Example   In the  NET Framework  the System Text StringBuilder class provides an abstraction over a string buffer  This buffer abstraction lets you work with the buffer without regard for its implementation  Thus  you re able to append strings to the buffer without regard for how the StringBuilder internally keeps track of things such the pointer to the buffer and managing memory when the buffer gets full  which it does with encapsulation via information hiding    rp

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Both Abstraction and Encapsulation are two of the four basic OOP concepts which allow you to model real-world things into objects so that you can implement them in your program and code  Many beginners get confused between Abstraction and Encapsulation because they both look very similar  If you ask someone what is Abstraction  he will tell that it s an OOP concept which focuses on relevant information by hiding unnecessary detail  and when you ask about Encapsulation  many will tell that it s another OOP concept which hides data from outside world  The definitions are not wrong as both Abstraction and Encapsulation does hide something  but the key difference is on intent   Abstraction hides complexity by giving you a more abstract picture  a sort of 10 000 feet view  while Encapsulation hides internal working so that you can change it later  In other words  Abstraction hides details at the design level  while Encapsulation hides details at the implementation level

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Abstraction simply means the technique in which only essential details of software is made visible to the user to help the user to use or operate with software  thus implementation details of that software are not shown are made invisible   Encapsulation is the technique that have package that hold one or more items and hence some of information  particularly program details  became visible and some not visible to the user  so encapsulation is achieved through information hiding  In summary  Abstraction is for observable behavior  externally  and encapsulation is for invisibility  internally  but these two are really complementary

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Abstraction allows you to treat a complex process as a simple process  For example  the standard  file  abstraction treats files as a contiguous array of bytes  The user developer does not even have to think about issues of clusters and fragmentation   Abstraction normally appears as classes or subroutines    Information hiding is about protecting your abstractions from malicious incompetent users  By restricting control of some state  hard drive allocations  for example  to the original developer  huge amounts of error handling becomes redundant  If nobody else besides the file system driver can write to the hard drive  then the file system driver knows exactly what has been written to the hard drive and where   The usual manifestation of this concept is private and protected keywords in OO languages

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See Joel s post on the Law of Leaky Abstractions  JoelOnsoftware  Basically  abstracting gives you the freedom of thinking of higher level concepts   A non-programming analogy is that most of us do not know where our food comes from  or how it is produced  but the fact that we  usually  don t have to worry about it frees us up to do other things  like programming   As for information hiding  I agree with jamting

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