What does aggregation in OOP represent?

Aggregation in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) represents a "whole-part" relationship, which is central to understanding how objects can be related to one another in a meaningful way. In aggregation, an object, known as the whole, contains references to one or more other objects, referred to as parts. This relationship shows a clear distinction where the part can exist independently of the whole.

For example, consider a university as a whole and the departments within it as parts. The university can exist without any specific department, while the department can function independently, such as being part of another university or existing in a different organizational context. This shows that aggregation is a way to express relationships where the life cycle of the parts is not strictly tied to the whole, which is a key feature of this relationship type.

In contrast, the other options refer to different concepts in OOP that do not accurately describe aggregation. Method overriding relates to polymorphism and allows a subclass to provide a specific implementation for a method that is already defined in its superclass. Static methods are associated with class-level functionality and do not pertain to object relationships. The singleton pattern is a design pattern that ensures a class has only one instance and provides a global point of access to it, unrelated