Missing the Forest for the Trees - Object Technology´s Second Hiatus

Object technology was first created in 1967, but it had to wait till the mid 80’s for widespread acceptance and adoption. We observe that that was not the only hiatus for the technology. Another major hiatus is currently in progress. Years of experience with implementing applications using object technology have revealed the essence of the power of the paradigm — harnessing polymorphism through the use of pure types. This wisdom is solidly incorporated in design patterns and application frameworks, which are widely accepted as the cornerstones for profitable use of the technology. Although all of this has been well-known for well over a decade, mainstream object-oriented analysis and design methods provide absolutely no support for building systems that harness these aspects and are hence flexible and extensible. In this paper we show how Reenkaug’s powerful idea of role modeling can be integrated into analysis and design methods to yield well-designed systems.