Case study: implementing an object-oriented design in C++

Many object-oriented methodologies give the impression that the process of taking a completed design and implementing it is mechanistic, even trivial. Instead software engineers find in practice that there are a large number of decisions still to be taken even after the specification and design are complete. This is particularly true when the implementation language for the product is designed to allow the widest possible range of implementation choices; so it is particularly true when the implementation language is C++. This paper describes some of the implementation issues faced by one project, and examines some of the additional personal role that aided their resolution. The project under development was an embedded system performing protocol conversion and database caching, part of a network management system