Overloading and Overriding

Overloading is a one of the ways in which Java implements one of the key concepts of Object orientation, polymorphism.Overloaded methods are differentiated only on the number, type and order of parameters, not on the return type of the method.(That is in brief, different signatures, different implementation, for the method)


Overriding a method means that its entire functionality is being replaced. It is something done in a child class to a method defined in a parent class. To override a method a new method is defined in the child class with exactly the same signature as the one in the parent class.(That is in brief, same signatures but different implementation)

Java SE5 has added the @Override annotation, which is not a keyword but can be used as if it were. When you mean to override a method, you can choose to add this annotation and the compiler will produce an error message if you accidentally overload instead of overriding.

The @Override annotation will thus prevent you from accidentally overloading when you don't meant to.