Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!battenkill!eddy
From: eddy@battenkill.uucp (frederick s eddy)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Object-Oriented Analysis
Keywords: Object-oriented analysis, data modeling, conceptual
Message-ID: <12294@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 3 Oct 88 22:58:41 GMT
References: <125@ghp.UUCP>
Sender: news@steinmetz.ge.com
Reply-To: uunet!steinmetz!battenkill!eddy (Frederick S Eddy)
Distribution: na
Organization: GE Corporate Research and Development
Lines: 57

In article <125@ghp.UUCP> tom@ghp.UUCP (Tom Huras) writes:
>
>This is a request for techniques or methodologies for analysing
>complex engineering systems.   ...

>Just so that you know where I've been, my prime sources of motivation
>at this time are:
>
>-  Bertrand Meyer's Object-oriented Software Construction  (1988):
>provides compelling reasons for using object-oriented techniques
>
>-  Brodie/Mylopoulos/Schmidt's On Conceptual Modelling (1982): deals
>with the need for conceptual modeling borrowing techniques of
>knowledge representation from AI, semantic data models from databases,
>and abstractions from programming languages.
>
>-  Rumbaugh, "Relations as Semantic Constructs in an Object-Oriented
>Language", OOPSLA '87: this tells how relations in an
>entity-relationship model should be implemented in an object-oriented
>language.

We are using an extended variant of the Entity-Relationship diagram here at
GE Corporate R&D Center.  We have found it to be very effective, both during
analysis and design of object-oriented systems.  Our technique, called
"Object Modeling Technique" (OMT) was developed jointly by GE-CRD and Calma.
(Jim Rumbaugh, cited above, works here at GE-CRD.) 

Here are some additional references:

Loomis, Shah, and Rumbaugh, "An Object Modeling Technique for Conceptual
Design", ECOOP '87 Proceedings, 1987. Published as Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 176, Springer-Verlag, 1987.

Blaha, Premerlani, and Rumbaugh, "Relational Database Design Using an
Object-Oriented Methodology", Communications of the ACM, April, 1988.

Sally Shlaer and Stephen Mellor, "Object-Oriented Systems Analysis: Modeling
the World in Data", Yourdon Press, 1988.  

	The Shlaer/Mellor book presents an analysis method similar to our
OMT technique. Chapter 9 of the book gives a very brief introduction to the
use of State Models to capture dynamic behavior, but there is much more to
it than is covered in the book.  Shlaer and Mellor offer two courses
covering their method in detail. Call Project Technology Inc. (PTI) at 
(415) 845-1484 for more information.  (I should add that I have no
relationship to PTI other than as a customer.)


Fred Eddy	  | UUCP:  uunet!steinmetz!battenkill!eddy
GE Corp. R&D	  | ARPA:  eddy@ge-crd.arpa
Schenectady, NY	  | 



Fred Eddy	  | UUCP:  uunet!steinmetz!battenkill!eddy
GE Corp. R&D	  | ARPA:  eddy@ge-crd.arpa
Schenectady, NY	  | GE DECnet: csbvax::mrgate!eddy@moose@smtp@tcpgateway