Using object-oriented paradigm to develop an evolutional vehicle routing system

Abstract Since the customer requirements and implementation environments change rapidly, the conventional application models have difficulties in satisfying the needs of users. Fortunately, the object-oriented paradigm represents things in terms of objects, and has the advantages of integrating application functions and data management. This advantage provides the evolutional features. Therefore, this study adopts a component assembly model to develop an evolutional system development process including database schema evolution, application object reuse, and the integration. Since a vehicle routing system is a computer system that uses a database to maintain data and application functions to implement delivering algorithms that focus on how to deliver customer orders under different circumstances, the evolution capability is demonstrated in various vehicle routing problems.