If you program in Java, JDBC is a good example. JDBC defines a set of interfaces but says nothing about the implementation. Your applications can be written against this set of interfaces. In theory, you pick some JDBC driver and your application would just work. If you discover there's a faster or "better" or cheaper JDBC driver or for whatever reason, you can again in theory re-configure your property file, and without having to make any change in your application, your application would still work.

Using interfaces is a key factor in making your code easily testable in addition to removing unnecessary couplings between your classes. By creating an interface that defines the operations on your class, you allow classes that want to use that functionality the ability to use it without depending on your implementing class directly. If later on you decide to change and use a different implementation, you need only change the part of the code where the implementation is instantiated. The rest of the code need not change because it depends on the interface, not the implementing class.

This is very useful in creating unit tests. In the class under test you have it depend on the interface and inject an instance of the interface into the class (or a factory that allows it to build instances of the interface as needed) via the constructor or a property settor. The class uses the provided (or created) interface in its methods. When you go to write your tests, you can mock or fake the interface and provide an interface that responds with data configured in your unit test. You can do this because your class under test deals only with the interface, not your concrete implementation. Any class implementing the interface, including your mock or fake class, will do.

编辑:下面是一篇文章的链接，其中Erich Gamma讨论了他的引用，“面向接口编程，而不是面向实现编程。”

http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/designprinciples.html

假设你有一个名为“Zebra”的产品，可以通过插件进行扩展。它通过在某个目录中搜索dll来查找插件。它加载所有这些dll，并使用反射来查找实现IZebraPlugin的任何类，然后调用该接口的方法来与插件通信。

这使得它完全独立于任何特定的插件类——它不关心类是什么。它只关心它们是否满足接口规范。

接口是这样定义可扩展性点的一种方式。与接口对话的代码是松散耦合的——事实上，它与任何其他特定的代码根本不耦合。它可以与多年后由从未见过原始开发人员的人编写的插件进行互操作。

你可以使用一个带有虚函数的基类——所有的插件都是从基类派生的。但这有很大的限制，因为一个类只能有一个基类，而它可以实现任意数量的接口。

接口编程与我们在Java或。net中看到的抽象接口完全没有关系。它甚至不是面向对象的概念。

它的意思是不要乱动对象或数据结构的内部结构。使用抽象程序接口(API)与数据交互。在Java或c#中，这意味着使用公共属性和方法，而不是原始字段访问。对于C语言来说，这意味着使用函数而不是原始指针。

EDIT:对于数据库，这意味着使用视图和存储过程，而不是直接访问表。

在Java中，这些具体类都实现了CharSequence接口:

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除了Object之外，这些具体的类没有共同的父类，因此它们之间没有任何联系，除了它们各自都与字符数组有关，表示或操作这些字符。例如，String对象实例化后，String的字符不能被更改，而StringBuffer或StringBuilder的字符可以被编辑。

然而，这些类中的每一个都能够适当地实现CharSequence接口方法:

char charAt(int index)
int length()
CharSequence subSequence(int start, int end)
String toString()

在某些情况下，曾经接受String的Java类库类已经修改为现在接受CharSequence接口。因此，如果你有一个StringBuilder实例，而不是提取一个String对象(这意味着实例化一个新的对象实例)，它可以在实现CharSequence接口时直接传递StringBuilder本身。

某些类实现的Appendable接口对于任何可以将字符追加到底层具体类对象实例的实例的情况都具有大致相同的好处。所有这些具体类都实现了Appendable接口:

BufferedWriter, CharArrayWriter, CharBuffer, FileWriter, FilterWriter, LogStream, OutputStreamWriter, PipedWriter, PrintStream, PrintWriter, StringBuffer, StringBuilder, StringWriter, Writer

它也适用于单元测试，你可以将你自己的类(满足接口的要求)注入到依赖它的类中