A Structured Object-oriented View on Systems Modeling

Interest in object-oriented methods has been rapidly increasing, as software developers and management demand on producing high quality and productivity softwares. Special features of object-oriented developments can really help to achieve high quality softwares. While this does not mean that object-oriented approaches will automatically obtain high quality software, the special features of object-oriented methods can only guarantee a certain degree of quality. To fully explore the benefit of object-oriented paradigm in software development, extra concepts should be introduced in order to achieve higher quality and productivity. The structured object-oriented view(SOOV) on systems modeling to be discussed in this paper is such a concept that can be used to further exploit the power of object-oriented methods to ensure higher quality, especially for large and complex systems. The structured view defines an overall inherent structure on objects and systems. Real world objects and systems are structurally decomposed into several logically and inherently related parts. After decomposition common parts could be discovered and factored out early in the modeling stage. The whole software development process is guided by this view in a quite neat and consistent manner.