Combining two approaches to object-oriented analysis

Abstract

There has been an immense growth in object-oriented methods to analysis and design. Many of these methods differ only on insignificant points and it is often difficult to deduce what the exact characteristics of the methods are before having tried them out in practice. All the more, there is a need for examining these characteristics and discussing fundamental aspects of object-oriented analysis and design. We believe that one such fundamental discussion is the handling of events in analysing the problem domain.

Coad & Yordon's method, OOA, forcefully models structure in the problem domain. Yet it fails significantly in modelling its dynamics. On the other hand, Jackson's method, JSD, provides an elegant way of modelling the dynamics of objects in the problem domain, but structure is to a large extend ignored. We have developed a new method, OOA&D, which takes the best elements of OOA and of JSD and integrates them into a coherent set of guidelines for analysis and design. In this paper we focus solely on how events are handled by OOA, JSD and OOA&D. The strengths and limitations of OOA and JSD are identified and discussed. The handling of events in OOA&D is described and illustrated and it is argued in which way it is an improvement compared to OOA and JSD.