Object-oriented box structures for developing complex systems

The combination of object-oriented concepts and formal system development methods provides a powerful means for the analysis and design of complex systems. As demonstrated by (A. Hevner and H. Mills, 1993), box structures are a mathematical representation of system views that support object-oriented system development. The authors extend the box description language (BDL) in order for it to support a full description of object-oriented features such as object classes, encapsulation and inheritance. The extended language, object-oriented box description language (OOBDL), provides a semantic and syntactic means of describing objects, classes of objects, and their ability to interact with one another by message passing.<>