Abstract method which when implemented will have different parameters

Question

Hello to all,
I have an assignment but not looking for someone to do it for me. I am only searching for a suggestion on how to do the following.
Imagine having an application that needs to provide an estimate of the rent for different buildings.
Basically I start with by having a class name Building. This class has an abstract method called estimateRent.
I then create two classes that extend the class Building which are named Apartment and House. Both need to have the method estimateRent.
However the problem is that the rent for the Apartment is calculated on the nights passed in the flat and the people in it, while the rent for the House is just calculated on a month bases.
This means the estimateRent method requires to have different parameters depending if it is implemented inside the Apartment class or the House class.
Now I only know of two options.
The first option is to not declare the estimateRent method as an abstract method inside the Building class and just implemented inside the Apartment and House with different parameters. I do not like this option since in the future if a new Building comes in then I would like to impose the fact that that object needs to have a calculate method.
The second option is to make the estimateRent method as abstract inside the Building class however takes a parameter of either a String array or else a Map. Then the estimateRent within the Apartment class would search for the elements tagged as nights and people, and the House class would only search for the elements tagged as months!
However do not know if there are any other, better ways on how to do this. I am using Java 1.4 however if you only have answers for Java 5.0 then please post them again since I always like to learn something new :)
Thank You for any comments.
tx

Answer 1

The implementation changes, yes.Yes that I could understand in the Strategy Pattern (in the document I read it was being compared with the Template Pattern).
Then you need to refactor your design.I tought about that, however if you read my first post you will notice that I have different criteria on which the costs need to be estimated. While the costs for a flat are estimated on the people staying in and nights slept there, the costs for the house are based only on the months stayed there regardless of the people living in. Now for me I feel that it is bad programming practice to create one method that can have all the parameters required for any scenario. I mean the following is NOT something I am going to do:
estimateCosts(int nights, int people, int months ... etc);
That's not a very elegant way of going about it.
What is the "Context" going to have?Yep I agree, but so far my limited brain has only come up with that! I am open to any other sugestion! always if i understand it first!
Basically the Context would better be named as Criteria and it would be an interface as follows:
interface Criteria{}
Then I would create two classes that implement the Criteria object as follows:
class AppartmentCriteria implements Criteria{
public Result estimateCosts(int nights, int people);
class HouseCriteria implements Criteria{
public Result estimateCosts(int months);
Now when I recieve the inputs, depending on the scenario the Criteria is typecasted and the correct parameters passed and we recieve the Result.
I feel the above sucks since I am not seeing it as an object oriented way of doing this out! Is there any other sugestions! The refactoring thing I am intrested in! however really I can not see how such a call to that method could be refectored!
Thank You,
tx.
PS: Sun has blocked my other account as well, and this time they did not even send me an email to confirm that I was registered successfuully :( Is there someone I can contact on this? I guess next time I will reply with tx53m :)