A strategy for mapping from function-oriented software models to object-oriented software models

Abstract

Because of being in transition or because of choice, many software development environments make use of both the function-oriented and object-oriented approaches in their software development process. In some cases, object-oriented and function-oriented approaches are used in the development of the same system, such as when using function-oriented analysis with object-oriented design, necessitating a transition or mapping from one model to the other. This paper reviews the issues involved in mapping from a function-oriented software model to an object-oriented software model and presents a strategy for accomplishing the mapping in a consistent and partially automatable manner. The effectiveness of the strategy is assessed with four different applications drawn from the literature. It is concluded that the mapping strategy is feasible and reasonably automatable.