Object-oriented design can be best thought of as the process by which a system is planned, a system which is comprised of objects that interact with each other. These objects will interact with each other so that they are capable of dealing with software issues.
Object-oriented design forms an important foundation for OOAD, and is just one of the many approaches which is used for the creation of software applications. Within the field of software development, an object is comprised of data and procedures which are encapsulated.
When objects are collected together, they symbolize an entity. The object interface is best described as the manner in which the object may form an interaction, as well as how it may be defined. The object oriented program will be defined by the interactions that occur among the objects.
The goal of object-oriented design is to define the objects, as well as the interactions that they form for solving problems which were defined and documented during OOA. From the perspective of an enterprise, OOD references the objects which comprise this enterprise.
For instance, within a specific company, the business object would be entities such as data, people, files equipment, and things of this nature. This is basically a description for the subset for the object-oriented design, which is based on class.
The design will not include the approaches that are related to object prototypes, because the objects will not be gathered through the instancing classes, but through cloning the prototype classes.
One topic which is very important within OOD is input. The input for OOD is offered by the output for the object oriented analysis. You must keep in mind that the output artifact will not have a reason to be completely developed to function as the input for the object-oriented design, and both the analysis and the design may function in parallel.
In reality, the results from a single activity may feed the other within the brief cycle based on the iterative process. The analysis and the design may be performed in an incremental manner, but the artifacts may continue to grow exponentially as opposed to being created in a single move. It is important to become familiar with the standard input artifacts that are associated with OOD.
Standard OOD Input Artifacts
The first artifact to become familiar with is the conceptual model. The conceptual model is the model which results from the OOA, it is responsible for acquiring the concepts which are associated with the problem domain. The conceptual model is specifically picked to be free from the details of the implementation, and this includes things such as concurrency.
The second artifact is the use case. The use case should be thought of as the description for the sequences for events which, when combined as one unit, can allow the system to carry out useful functions.
Every use case must offer a single or multiple scenarios which will showcase the manner in which the system must interact with the users, which are referred to as being actors.
The actors are responsible for achieving specific goals for the enterprise. The actors for the use case may be the end users, but they may also be additional systems as well.
In numerous situations, the use cases will be isolated from the diagrams for the use case. The use case diagrams may be utilized for the purpose of locating the actor and the processes that they may carry out.
The SSD, also known as the System Sequence Diagram, is a picture which is responsible for showcasing the scenario for a use case, as well as the events which the outside actors are responsible for generating. It will also showcase the order and the inter-system events that may be possible.
The User Interface
The documentations for the user interface are documents which showcase and provide a description for the look of the user interface for the end user. While it is not necessary to have this artifact, it goes a long way in allowing you to visualize the way the end product looks before the end user sees it, and it can allow your design to make the needed enhancements.
