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A

abstract class: Classes that you do not instantiate. You create abstract classes so that subclasses that share common attributes and methods can inherit from a single common class. See also generalization and differentiation.

abstraction: See generalization.

action: One of a set of occurrences that processes data, either sequentially or concurrently. See also event.

activatable subworkspace: A subworkspace that you can activate and deactivate programmatically to enable and disable entire portions of your application.

"analogous to" relationship: The relationship between individual instances of the same class. See also "type of" relationship.

application programmer's interface (API): A set of public attributes, methods, and procedures that provide programmatic access to the private capabilities of a module or set of modules. You typically create APIs for reusable modules in large-scale applications and domain-specific toolkits. See also private layer and public layer.

array: A data structure that defines a fixed-length series of items or values. See also list.

asynchronicity: The time-dependent behavior of a module. Contrast with concurrency.

atomicity: Procedural processing that maintains a single processing thread, without any wait states. See also single-threaded processing.

attribute: A common characteristic of a class. In object-oriented terms, an object's attributes are its data. The public attributes of a class are part of its protocol. See also method.

attribute access facility: A feature whereby you can directly access every system-defined attribute of every built-in G2 class, using sequences and structures.

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