The Demeter method: an efficient way to build adaptive software

Abstract

Many object-oriented software developers often face the optimal class structure problem when a large, complex project starts. They have to find a class structure and improve it iteratively during the development process. Changes to the class structure cause substantial effort to maintain behaviors built upon the original class structure[5]. And a general application, like a project defect management system, is usually developed based on a class structure extracted from a specific problem domain, for example, software system defect tracking and repairing. Next time when similar requirements (i.e. a semiconductor system defect tracking and repairing) come in, the existing application is found hard to adapt to the new context for the reason that too many details of user-related class structure are included and encoded into the application implementation. Most developers would rather adopt the build-from-scratch techniques than reuse the current system, though they have very similar requirements.