Normalization of object-oriented design

The object-oriented approach does not follow any formal design process and is mostly ad hoc in nature. This makes it more of an art than a science. The quality of the resultant design therefore depends to a large extent on the skills of the individual designer and cannot be evaluated easily. We believe that the theory of normalization, available to the designer of relational database systems, can also be applied to object-oriented design. This paper outlines the process of application of the theory of normalization to object-oriented design and shows that, if applied properly, it rids the design process from the aforementioned problems and yields a better object model by bringing formalism and taking a scientific approach.