OO OVERSOLD - THOSE OBJECTS OF OBSCURE DESIRE

The principles of object-orientation have been widely used in the area of programming for some time. Their application to the design and spe cification of software has proved beneficial in a number of ways. In r ecent years there have been numerous attempts to exploit the same prin ciples in high level design and the analysis of systems requirements. In many cases this has been achieved by extending the principles of ob ject-oriented programming to the earlier phases of analysis and design without recognition that activities and objectives in the different d omains may be dissimilar. This paper demonstrates that the endeavour t o extend the principles of object-orientation into an all-encompassing method is ill-considered, and that an expansive view of methods integ ration is more likely to prove conducive in harnessing the strengths o f object-orientation to alternative approaches to systems development.