Progress was made in the understanding of object-oriented (O-O) design through the introduction of patterns of design and architecture. Few works, however, offer methods of precise specification for O-O design.
This article provides a well-defined ontology and an underlying framework for the formal specification of O-O design: (1) We observe key design motifs in O-O design and architectures. (2) We provide a computational model in mathematical logic suitable for the discussion in O-O design. (3) We use our conceptual toolkit to analyze and compare proposed formalisms.
software design theory - software architecture - object oriented programming - formal foundations - design patterns