Re: What is analysis?

Marshall,

I only have one book on analysis on my bookshelf. It's "Object Oriented Analysis" (2nd edition) by Peter Coad and Edward Yourden. My copy goes back to the early 90s. The state of the art has almost surely progressed beyond this. I would recommend you get and read this book. An alternative would be to get a successor book, one the authors might recommend, if they are still around. Again, the state of the art has almost surely progressed.

From your posts some 3 year back, I know that you are something of an
"object oriented programmer in recovery". And, even though you are able to
pass in c.d.t. as just another relational bigot, I know you are little more open, in secret, to object oriented thinking than some of the rest of us, including me. I'm not very open to object oriented thinking, but that didn't prevent me from appreciating OOA.

What's interesting about OOA is that it does NOT suffer from the
"object-relational impedance mismatch" that has plagued people who have
tried to build systems using OOD and RM together. I found this book very easy to accept, without abandoning my preference for "relational think" over "object think". It helps that the authors understood and appreciated the way "the database people" go about understanding the subject matter.

Here by the way, is the definition of "system analysis" they offer for starters, from DeMarco[1978]: "Analysis is the study of a problem, prior to taking some action."

This isn't perfect, but I'll offer it in preference to my efforts.

They contrast OOA with functional decomposition, the data flow approach, and information modeling, even though they borrow freely from all of them. They deal extensively with the problem of changing requirements.

You seem to have gotten a long way with no formal training in this area. You might get even farther with some reading. Warning: the input to analysis is almost entirely psychological. The output, however, is expected to be logical, or at least useable by logical people. Second warning: analysis is not design. I keep repeating this, but we keep forgetting it. Received on Mon Dec 03 2007 - 15:15:26 CET