object and instance

[Mike Yu]

Hi,
Can someone tell me what are the differences between instance and object?

[Thomas Paul]

An instance of a class is an object.

[Ilja Preuss]

"Instance" is a more general concept.
As written above, an instance of a class is an object.
An instance of an association is a link (that is, between classes you have associations, between objects you have links).
An instance of a DTD or XML-Schema is an XML-file.
Does that help?

[Mike Yu]

Hi, Thomas and Ilja,
Your answes are useful. I am still not very clear about the instance and object of EJB. It seems they have some diiferent meaning.
For Entity Bean, the application server creates instance, but it is assigned to an remote object only after the create method in the home interface is called.
Does someone have some ideas about the instance in this case?

[Ilja Preuss]

Originally posted by Mike Yu:
For Entity Bean, the application server creates instance, but it is assigned to an remote object only after the create method in the home interface is called.

The instance they are speaking of is the object that is instanciated by the application server - the actual entity bean. The remote object is an instance of the remote interface.
Does that make things clearer for you?

[Mike Yu]

That is much better! Thank you, Ilja.

[Mr. C Lamont Gilbert]

Their meanings are very close so if you are having trouble differentiating them, its ok.
An object is created from a class. Many objects may be created from the same class. Each of these objects will be referred to as "instances" of that class.
So an object is always an instance, and an instance is always an object.
ClassA refA = new ClassA();
ClassA refA2 = new ClassA();
ClassB refB = new ClassB();
ClassB refB2 = new ClassB();
refA,refA2,refB,refB2 refer to objects;
refA,refA2 refer to instances of ClassA;
refB,refB2 refer to instances of ClassB;