MultiProperties

Properties, which occur in C#, provide good support for features of objects with singular multiplicity and allow straightforward implementation and use of an object´s encapsulated state. If, however, used for features with a higher multiplicity, usually represented by collection objects, they fail to provide a natural approach to proper encapsulation of the one-to-many aspect of such characteristics. Lacking support by powerful concepts, such as properties, makes handling these associations with many-valued multiplicity necesitate much boilerplate code in mainstream programming languages. This makes the implementation of such features tedious and error-prone. In this paper, we introduce multiproperties: properties specifically developed to make implementing one-to-many relationships in object oriented programming languages easier and more robust. Multiproperties make use of operator overloading to access these multivalued features in a simple and natural way. They are aimed at reducing boilerplate code and making encapsulation of an object´s data automatic and configurable.