Improving object oriented analysis by explicit change analysis

Abstract

Changeability is one of the major concerns in software development. OO (Object-Oriented) technology itself is not enough to solve this problem, i.e. software systems cannot have enough changeability by just using any specific kind of OO language or computing models such as CORBA or COM. In this paper, we first discuss how the changeability issue is handled in current software development methods and what is the most important prerequisite for solving the software changeability problem. Based on these analyses, we argue that most of current OO analysis methods have missed an important activity in their analysis phase, i.e. change analysis. Thus, OO software systems developed according to these methods often cannot exhibit the expected maintainability, extensibility and reusability. In order to improve current OO analysis methods, we have proposed a conceptual framework for conducting a systematic change analysis in software analysis phase. A detailed case study of the application of this framework in a real software project has also been described in this paper.