EROOS: An entity-relationship based object-oriented specification method

The need for mastering the complexity of software systems and the hereby related demands for maintenance and changeability is partly fulfilled by the principles and benefits of objectorientation. The basic idea behind object-orientation is to reflect the real world into the physical software model one is trying to develop. Although these ideas were introduced a long time ago in the educational world, the industrial use has until recently been restricted to some minor research projects. The introduction of HOOD (Hie.. rarchical Object-Oriented Design) however has finally lead to a considerable application of object-orientation in large industrial software projects in Europe. The benefits of such an approach will certainly be confirmed by its users. Although we think that this evolution is a major progress in the right direction, the full application of object-orientation on the entire software life cycle however has not been reached yet. Object-orientation has too long been restricted to object-oriented programming, in languages like Smalltalk, Eiffel, C++ or Turbo Pascal, and design methods, like HOOD, OOSD and Coad’s OOD. Object-oriented analysis methods were introduced only recently, and still have to pass their future teething trouble and growing pains. The key idea to a possible mastering of software complexity will be the recognition that change is an intrinsic characteristic of software systems. With EROOS, a development method based on concepts from entity-relationship modeling and object-orientation, we try to incorporate this idea in the actual development of software systems. The power of EROOS is based on three important aspects: — a combination of behavior modeling and structure modeling; A full integration of these two modeling techniques will provide the specification method with more powerful composition and decomposition properties. This will lead to better structured, changeable, maintainable and reusable software systems