Object-oriented database and user interface design

Application maintenance is an important part of SDLC (Systems Development Life Cycle). Possible maintenance issues have to be considered during the initial application design and development. The aim of this paper is to present how database and GUI can be designed in an object-oriented way, and to investigate whether such design can contribute to reduction of maintenance costs. Benefits of such approach are expected to be particularly noticeable in large scale applications that are expected to evolve and experience profound changes. Costs of maintenance as well as time required for potential modifications of application which is designed in accordance to the proposed methodology can be significantly reduced. Proposed methodology is compared with traditional application design which is based on relational database and user interface development using Rapid UI tools.