OBJECT-ORIENTED ANALYSIS AS DESIGN: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Object-oriented analysis is the activity of understanding a problem domain and developing a specification for it within an object-oriented paradigm. In this paper we propose object-oriented analysis can be viewed as a design task that consists of analysis, synthesis and internal and external completeness and consistency checking. We postulate a blackboard based design framework and propose several alternative theories within this framework. Data from an expert analyst is collected and analyzed for relative explanatory power of the alternative theories. Basic findings are that viewed as a design activity, object-oriented analysis is neither top-down nor completely opportunistic in nature, Rather, (1) analysis (the process of finding objects and processes) and synthesis (constructing the object model and state-transition diagrams) are complementary activities while internal completeness and consistency checking is coupled with synthesis and (2) construction of objects and processes are cyclic and complementary processes. The findings are compared with both descriptive and normative research in automated software design.