Re: ada and final/sealed classes

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>]

>>>>> "Matthew" == Matthew Heaney <matthewjheaney@earthlink.net> writes:

    Matthew> onsbomma@hotmail.com (Hans Van den Eynden) writes:
    >> I want to prevent someone from inheriting from a type I made (for
    >> security purposes). I am a junior Ada programmer and I know this
    >> possible in Java (final class) and C# (sealed class). Is this also
    >> possible in Ada???

    Matthew> Not really, no.

Also, Ada scoping rules were designed to prevent programming errors
from occurring when you accidently refer to a value without using the
correct interface.

Ada scoping rules were not designed to prevent an intruder from
deliberately doing malicious activities, as everything runs in the
same Unix process. Any security measures must be implemented by you,
the programmer. e.g. split into multiple, independent processes,
communicating via CORBA, SOAP, or some other protocol.

This is unlike Java, where everything runs in a secure sandbox, and it
is possible to check the code to ensure it doesn't break set rules.

Then again, I may have misunderstood what you are trying to do. I
can't see any security value in stopping someone from inheriting from
a type, as creating new types has to happen at compile time (unlike
Java), and if you have access to compile the code, you probably have
access to everything anyway.
-- 
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>