Object-Oriented Design

The text uses the Booch (1991) methodology to illustrate object-oriented design. The result of object-oriented analysis is translated into time-event diagrams, Booch diagrams, message communications, service objects, and process diagrams. Collectively, they constitute a set of holistic specifications to effectively allocate functionality over program modules at the lowest level and multiprocessor configurations at the highest level.

The Booch notation has been unified with other object-oriented notations (Rumbaugh and Jacobsen) into Unified Modeling Language (UML). In Unit 10, we will look at another example of object-oriented analysis and design using the UML notation. Therefore, you may skim this chapter to gain familiarity with OOD, which you will apply in Unit 10.

Introduction

Object-oriented analysis defines classes and class/ objects, processes, and the assignment of objects to processes, resulting in encapsulated objects. In object-oriented design (OOD), we continue this analysis of the problem domain to assign the encapsulated objects to one of the four subdomains, elaborate component definitions to include service processes, design module interactions, and define the required messages and their type.