Object Oriented Analysis

From: Laconic2 <laconic2_at_comcast.net>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 08:40:47 -0400
Message-ID: <1Mydnc0TIee51ejdRVn-gw_at_comcast.com>

The recent discussions of the relational model, OTLT and Pizza among others, led me to haul out my copy of "Object Oriented Analysis" by Coad and Yourden.

My impression is that OOA is a jewel. It captures the best of Information Modeling, including Entity Relationship Diagrams and Semantic Data Modeling. It also captures the power and subtlety of Object Oriented Programming Languages and Knowledge Based Systems. It produces a synthesis that allows one to learn about the problem domain and the system's responsibilities from both points of view: data requirements and processing requirements.

The most important point, in this forum, is that it doesn't present the same image of OOP as the object oriented apologists in here do. There IS time to learn what the subject matter experts know, at least insofar as it impacts the problem domain and the system's responsibilities. You WILL know what the entities are, and you can create a separate table for each of them. There is no sufficient reason not to.

And you will know a whole lot about what can be encapsulated in your objects as well.

If the problem domain and the system's responsibilites change over time, you can change the system accordingly.

This is completely orthogonal to the discussions held in here. Neither object bashing nor declaring the data centric view passe are relevant. Received on Thu Apr 08 2004 - 14:40:47 CEST