The authors of Actionscript 3.0 Design Patterns offer this one: a branch with leaves, where a Branch is a Composite and a Leaf is a Component. Makes sense — a branch can contain multiple leaves, while a leaf is a self-contained object with no nested elements or no additional items inside it/contained in it. For simplicity’s sake & since no analogy is perfect, let’s leave biology & the fact that a leaf is made up of layers of cells aside.
As good as the branch/leaves metaphor is, different people learn differently, so having additional examples, with alternate ways to describe the same abstract concept can’t hurt.
Perhaps, some of these can be useful too:
- Ice tray & ice cubes
- Ammo belt & bullets
- Moving truck (Composite), boxes (Composite), chair (Component), & box contents (Component or Composite)
- Organizational chart: Department (Composite), Employee (Component)
- Suitcase & clothes
- Directory & files
- Composition (the “Has-A” relationship) in Object Oriented Programming
timshaya 