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4.3.3 Omission of Class Type of an Object Reference


   The default form of referring to a class instance (object) is to give its class name and its object identifier. However, due to the strong typing of the MOF, there are many situations in which the references will always be to a known class and hence the class name can be omitted.

   There are three situations when this shorthand can be used; in a MOF Reference, in an attribute where the type of the attribute is an instance of a local MOF class, and in the representation of an association. Each of these is subject to two conditions. If the object that is being referred to is contained by the referring object, then the referred object may be represented as a declaration rather than a reference and, in this case, its type name may not be omitted.

   The second condition is that the referred class and all of its subclasses must use a consistent identification scheme, either by all using the same attribute as an identifying attribute, or all arbitrary unique identifiers. Without this condition, the risk would be introduced of having two objects with the same identifying string.