Inheritance is a primary benefit of object oriented technology. Process Commander offers multiple types of inheritance that can maximize reuse of your rules while allowing localized overriding as appropriate. Also called polymorphism, inheritance allows a rule created for one class (possibly an abstract class) to be applied to other classes that inherit from it:

• RuleSet version inheritance works using three-level version numbers. For example, users who have a version 02-15-06 in their RuleSet list inherit rules in version 02-15-05, when no rule instance exists in 02-15-06.
• RuleSet inheritance arises through the order of RuleSet names in the user's RuleSet list. Rule instances in a RuleSet at the top of the RuleSet list supersede others of the same name.
• Organizational inheritance is implemented through a four-level assembly of privileges and RuleSet versions through the access group, organization unit, division, and organization.
• Class inheritance searches for rules from a concrete, lower class, up the class hierarchy to find available rules.

Class inheritance uses a sophisticated algorithm to find the parent classes of a specific class. Two types of class inheritance — directed inheritance and pattern inheritance — are available.

Use the Class Inheritance display to confirm which classes are ancestor classes to a specific class, and the order in which Process Commander searches these classes during rule resolution using both pattern inheritance and directed inheritance.

Class inheritance does not apply to external classes, even if the class name contains a dash character.

	class, directed inheritance, external class, pattern inheritance, rule resolution, RuleSet list
	About Class rules About the Class Inheritance tool Class hierarchy — Concepts and terms How the system finds rules through rule resolution

Definitions — I