(An) object-oriented design approach based on software patterns

Abstract

Object-oriented analysis and design methods offer a bottom-up approach to constructing a software system based on the concepts of objects, inheritance and information hiding. However, the bottom-up approach of object-oriented methods causes the development of large systems to be problematic since they do not suggest how to decompose a system to deal with the essential complexity. To address this problem, we propose a complementary approach to the Object Modeling Technique(OMT) based on the software patterns. Incorporating software patterns, architectural patterns and object-oriented design patterns in particular into design phases, we introduce top-down mode in addition to the conventional bottom-up approach. The architectural patterns are used in the system design phase in which the overall system architecture is derived, and the object-oriented design patterns are used in the object design phase in which the analysis models are refined so that implementation in a particular programming language can be accomplished. Our approach allows developers to produce a reusable flexible design with reduced efforts and cost. Based on our approach, we also propose a pattern language for a typical Commercial Banking System. The pattern language describes the target system in terms of software patterns. We show what patterns can be applied to the Commercial Banking System and present the adaptation results of each pattern to the system.