Object Oriented Methodologies

OBJECT ORIENTED METHODOLOGIES

There are numerous object oriented methods being advocated at the present time

There four main criteria that should be considered by an object-oriented method

1) Abstraction, including rules, guidelines, heuristics for the separation of the problem domain into different abstractions; methods for identifying state, services and interfaces for encapsulating objects; and strategy for abstracting commonality for abstract super classes.

2) Notation and representational verisimilitude, including notation for representing aggregation, inheritance and functional hierarchies, message sending/calling/parameter passing between objects in a seniority hierarchy; representation of autonomous objects and asynchronous message passing; and support for constraint representation and enforcement.

3) Validation, including transformation rules between alternative representations of the design; validation between message sends and interface protocols; overcoming implementation language shortcomings; and support for test generation and metrics for test coverage.

4) Reuse, including heuristics for identifying pre-existing classes from which to develop new application classes; support for different categories of object class and their reusability characteristics; and language independence for logical or architectural design phase.

1. Object-Oriented Development (OOD)/Booch

Booch's work on object-oriented design is well matured and respected in the field of object- oriented analysis and design. Object-Oriented design with applications is an ideal text for introducing the concepts of object-orientation. It is divided into three main sections, the first introducing key object-oriented concepts, the second setting out Booch's method for object- oriented design and the third giving five case studies.

In his earlier text Software Engineering with Ada [Booc87], Booch suggests the following steps for analyzing a system in preparation for designing a...