Prime Dispatch

Object-oriented systems model a problem as a set of interacting objects that enact operations referred to by name. Polymorphism is the phenomenon wherein somewhat interchangeable objects each expose an operation of the same name but possibly differing in behavior. As an example, a File object and a Database object both have a StoreRecord method that can be used to write a personnel record to storage. Their implementations differ. A program holds a reference to an object which may be either a File object or a Database object. Which it is may have been determined by a run-time setting, and at this stage, the program may not know or care which. When the program calls StoreRecord on the object, something needs to choose which behavior gets enacted. If one thinks of OOP as sending messages to objects, then in this example the program sends a StoreRecord message to an object of unknown type, leaving it to the run-time support system to dispatch the message to the right object. The object enacts whichever behavior it implements.