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Designing Object Systems by S. Cook & J Daniels Recommended

ISBN: 0-13203-860-9       Publisher: Prentice Hall       Pages: 388pp       Price: £24-95

Categories:   object oriented

Reviewed by Peter Wippell in C Vu 7-3 (Mar 1995)

Although the concepts of formal logic and set theory, are used, throughout, to give precision to ideas like 'association' (which are presented in other books by means of examples) the book can easily be read by people with no experience of formal methods. Any even slightly difficult mathematics is relegated to footnotes.

The authors identify three models in the development process. An Essential Model represents the real world and a Specification Model describes the requirements of the software. In both of these, simplification is achieved by broadcasting events to the object population, rather than by passing messages between objects. This latter is considered programming detail and left to an Implementation Model.

The models rest mainly on Type Diagrams, State Diagrams, Object Diagrams and Event Lists using 'icons' based closely on Rumbaugh's OMT, but with added information content achieved through the economy of set and logic notation.

Using well-chosen examples, the early chapters discuss the construction of the models and their interrelationships. Further chapters then deal with concurrency, encapsulation and reuse, the development process and partitioning a project into software Domains, which I found particularly valuable.

I am convinced. I think that Syntropy promises to be able to produce a clearer, more precise and more easily modified description of a software project, than its predecessors could. Only time will tell how closely it will approach an ideal solution.

Fully recommended and good value for anyone who practises object oriented software design.