Object-oriented analysis and design Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) is a technical approach for analyzing and designing an application, system, or business by applying object-oriented programming, as well as using visual modeling throughout the software development pro ...

(OOAD)

models A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided int ...

are often presented without clarifying the

viewpoint Viewpoint may refer to: * Scenic viewpoint, a high place where people can gather to view scenery In computing * Viewpoint model, a computer science technique for making complex systems more comprehensible to human engineers * Viewpoint Corpora ...

represented by the model. By default, these models denote an implementation viewpoint that visualises the structure of a

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to Execution (computing), execute. It is one component of software, which also includes software documentation, documentation and other intangibl ...

. Mixed viewpoints do not support the fundamental separation of

interfaces Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Inter ...

from

implementation Implementation is the realization of an application, execution of a plan, idea, scientific modelling, model, design, specification, Standardization, standard, algorithm, policy, or the Management, administration or management of a process or Goal ...

details, which is one of the primary benefits of the

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impleme ...

paradigm. An ambiguous or mixed viewpoint is an

anti-pattern An anti-pattern in software engineering, project management, and business processes is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by computer programmer An ...

. In

object-oriented analysis and design Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) is a technical approach for analyzing and designing an application, system, or business by applying object-oriented programming, as well as using visual modeling throughout the software development pro ...

there are three viewpoints: The business viewpoint (the information that is domain specific and matters to the end user), the specification viewpoint (which defines the exposed interface elements of a class), and the implementation viewpoint (which deals with the actual internal implementation of the class). If the viewpoint becomes mixed then these elements will blend together in a way which makes it difficult to separate out and maintain the internals of an object without changing the interface, one of the core tenets of object-oriented analysis and design.

References

* Object-oriented programming Software design {{Soft-eng-stub

See also

References