Good design?

Is the below design OK?

Code:

---

    public abstract class MyAbstract
    {
        public Dictionary<int, ushort> Table
        {
            get;
            protected set; 
        }

        protected MyAbstract()
        {
            PopulateTable();
        }

        protected abstract void PopulateTable();
    }

---

Table will be initialized inside PopulateTable() by it's derived classes;

Calling virtual (or abstract) methods in a constructor is generally not a good idea as it will 'break' any initialisation of member variables which a subclass performs.

If someone subclasses 'MyAbstract' and initialises variables in their constructor which they rely on in their implementation of PopulateTable - those variables will be null when PopulateTable is called. The easiest way to work around this issue is to only create instances of MyAbstract through a factory so you can do something like:

Code:

---

public T Create <T> () where T : MyAbstract, new ()
{
    T instance = new T ();
    instance.PopulateTable ();
    return instance;
}

---

Thanks, that makes sense.

I have now modified to:

Code:

---

    public abstract class MyAbstract
    {
      public abstract Dictionary<int, ushort> Table { get; }
    }

---

And I think the above code doesn't bring big difference to interface