Towards a general object-oriented software development methodology

An object is an abstract software model of a problem domain entity. Objects are packages of both data and operations of that data (Goldberg 83, Booch 83). The Ada (tm) package construct is representative of this general notion of an object. Object-oriented design is the technique of using objects as the basic unit of modularity in systems design. The Software Engineering Laboratory at the Goddard Space Flight Center is currently involved in a pilot program to develop a flight dynamics simulator in Ada (approximately 40,000 statements) using object-oriented methods. Several authors have applied object-oriented concepts to Ada (e.g., Booch 83, Cherry 85). It was found that these methodologies are limited. As a result a more general approach was synthesized with allows a designer to apply powerful object-oriented principles to a wide range of applications and at all stages of design. An overview is provided of this approach. Further, how object-oriented design fits into the overall software life-cycle is considered

Methodology for object-oriented real-time systems analysis and design: Software engineering

Successful application of software engineering methodologies requires an integrated analysis and design life-cycle in which the various phases flow smoothly 'seamlessly' from analysis through design to implementation. Furthermore, different analysis methodologies often lead to different structuring of the system so that the transition from analysis to design may be awkward depending on the design methodology to be used. This is especially important when object-oriented programming is to be used for implementation when the original specification and perhaps high-level design is non-object oriented. Two approaches to real-time systems analysis which can lead to an object-oriented design are contrasted: (1) modeling the system using structured analysis with real-time extensions which emphasizes data and control flows followed by the abstraction of objects where the operations or methods of the objects correspond to processes in the data flow diagrams and then design in terms of these objects; and (2) modeling the system from the beginning as a set of naturally occurring concurrent entities (objects) each having its own time-behavior defined by a set of states and state-transition rules and seamlessly transforming the analysis models into high-level design models. A new concept of a 'real-time systems-analysis object' is introduced and becomes the basic building block of a series of seamlessly-connected models which progress from the object-oriented real-time systems analysis and design system analysis logical models through the physical architectural models and the high-level design stages. The methodology is appropriate to the overall specification including hardware and software modules. In software modules, the systems analysis objects are transformed into software objects

Advanced software development workstation. Comparison of two object-oriented development methodologies

This report is an attempt to clarify some of the concerns raised about the OMT method, specifically that OMT is weaker than the Booch method in a few key areas. This interim report specifically addresses the following issues: (1) is OMT object-oriented or only data-driven?; (2) can OMT be used as a front-end to implementation in C++?; (3) the inheritance concept in OMT is in contradiction with the 'pure and real' inheritance concept found in object-oriented (OO) design; (4) low support for software life-cycle issues, for project and risk management; (5) uselessness of functional modeling for the ROSE project; and (6) problems with event-driven and simulation systems. The conclusion of this report is that both Booch's method and Rumbaugh's method are good OO methods, each with strengths and weaknesses in different areas of the development process

Working notes of the KI \u2796 Workshop on Agent Oriented Programming and Distributed Systems

Agent-oriented techniques are likely to be the next significant breakthrough in software development process. They provide a uniform approach throughout the analysis, design and implementation phases in the development life cycle. Agent-oriented techniques are a natural extension to object-oriented techniques, but while there is a whole pIethora of analysis and design methods in the object-oriented paradigm, very little work has been reported on design and analysis methods in the agent-oriented community. After surveying and examining a number of well-known object-oriented design and analysis methods, we argue that none of these methods, provide the adequate model for the design and analysis of multi-agent systems. Therefore, we propose a new agent-specific methodology that is based on and builds upon object-oriented methods. We identify three major models that need to be build during the development of multi-agent applications and describe the process of building these models

A quality assurance reference model for object-orientation

Software quality assurance for object-oriented information systems development is the issue dealt with here. A Quality Assurance Reference Model is proposed based on the Revised Spiral Life Cycle Model. The Quality Assurance Reference Model associates quality criteria, quality factors and metrics into a matrix framework that may be used to achieve quality assurance for all cycles of the Revised Spiral Model

Applying Fuzzy Logic Techniques in Object-Oriented Software Development

In the last several years, a considerable number of object-oriented methods have been introduced to create robust, reusable and adaptable software systems [1], [2], [3], [4]. Object-oriented methods define a considerable number of rules which are generally expressed by using two-valued logic. For instance, an entity in a requirement specification is either accepted or rejected as a class. We consider two major problems in the way how rules are defined and applied in current object-oriented methods. The first problem, termed quantization problem, is a natural result of the incapacity of two-valued logic to express the approximate and inexact nature of a typical software development process. The second problem, termed contextual bias problem, arises because most of methods are not able to model the effects of the context on the validity of the method. To reduce these problems, we propose a new fuzzy logic-based object-oriented software development technique. This technique is not specific to a particular object-oriented method, but can be used to evaluate and enhance current methods. In addition, the application of fuzzy logic-based reasoning opens new perspectives to software development, such as fuzzy artifacts and accumulative software life-cycle

ReMoTe: A complete tool to support software process management

The purpose of the project is to provide the Department of Computer Science at California State University, San Bernardino with a software project management tool that will help companies in their software development. ReMoTe (Recursively Estimating Multi-Threaded Observation Technology Enterprise) will assist software engineering teams with defining their scheduled delivery dates, life-cycle definitions, team hierarchy, and communication. Using the object-oriented approach, ReMoTe can support any software life cycle model. ReMoTe can help manage and control the software process over the Web. It also allows people to manage software artifacts using database systems such as mySQL, Microsoft Access, or Oracle

A Methodology to Quantify Cumulative Damage Function (CDF) for Integration Into an Object-Oriented Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the most widely used tools to determine the environmental impact of products and processes. One of the main concerns with LCA is the limited comparability of the results due to limitations in defining the functional unit. This affects goal and scope definition of the LCA studies. A result, an object-oriented framework for LCA that integrates functional analysis and systems engineering principles was developed. In this research a cumulative damage function (CDF) to quantify the life of components, subsystems and components was defined. However, the development of the methodology and underlying principles to develop the CDF was left for future work. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a framework to quantify CDF using the concepts of Remaining Useful Life (RUL), reliability analysis and failure analysis so that it can be easily integrated into the object-oriented LCA framework. This thesis will present a 5-step methodology to quantify the CDF and demonstrate its use and effectiveness by implementing it on a manual can opener and a coffee maker as examples of product systems

An integrated approach to system design, reliability, and diagnosis

The requirement for ultradependability of computer systems in future avionics and space applications necessitates a top-down, integrated systems engineering approach for design, implementation, testing, and operation. The functional analyses of hardware and software systems must be combined by models that are flexible enough to represent their interactions and behavior. The information contained in these models must be accessible throughout all phases of the system life cycle in order to maintain consistency and accuracy in design and operational decisions. One approach being taken by researchers at Ames Research Center is the creation of an object-oriented environment that integrates information about system components required in the reliability evaluation with behavioral information useful for diagnostic algorithms. Procedures have been developed at Ames that perform reliability evaluations during design and failure diagnoses during system operation. These procedures utilize information from a central source, structured as object-oriented fault trees. Fault trees were selected because they are a flexible model widely used in aerospace applications and because they give a concise, structured representation of system behavior. The utility of this integrated environment for aerospace applications in light of our experiences during its development and use is described. The techniques for reliability evaluation and failure diagnosis are discussed, and current extensions of the environment and areas requiring further development are summarized