62:286 System Design

Diagrams - from the Addison Wesley website for Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models by Martin Fowler. the entire set of notes at this sub-website provide a good overview of the field. The following three pages within the sub-web are particularly applicable and are a good place to start. Then go back to the top and read the entire sub-web Quotes are taken from the website.

State Transition Diagrams. Harel Statecharts were introduced by Rumbaugh, taken up by Booch and adopted in the UML. "State models are ideal for describing the behavior of a single object. They are also formal, so tools can be built which can execute them. Their biggest limitation is that they are not good at describing behavior that involved several objects, for these cases use an interaction diagram or an activity diagram."

Interaction Diagrams were originated by jacobson and adopted in the UML. Also in this page: collaboration diagrams. "Interaction diagrams should be used when you want to look at the behavior of several objects within a single use case. They are good at showing the collaborations between the objects, they are not so good at precise definition of the behavior."

Activity Diagrams, based on Odell's event diagrams, morphed into a form used in UML. "Activity diagrams are useful when you want to describe a behavior which is parallel, or when you want to show how behaviors in several use-cases interact."

Patterns and Object-Oriented Design

This is a special-feature section of Dr. Dobbs Journal. (2/1/2001)

An Introduction To The Standard Template Library

Provides a very readable tutorial introduction to stl. Uses some of the ideas of Booch notation in its presentation.

Introduction to the Booch Method

An overview of Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications, 2nd edition by Grady Booch. 

The Booch method

An introduction to object oriented development. "This WWW-page will help you understand the Booch method, if you are already familiar with OO programming. It shows you how to map Booch symbols to C++. There is a tutorial included, where a simple application is developed using actual OO techniques."

An OSA Tutorial

This WWW-page will help you understand the Booch method, if you are already familiar with OO programming. It shows you how to map Booch symbols to C++. There is a tutorial included, where a simple application is developed using actual OO techniques.

It is better to.read this one after you have developed an understanding of the Booch method.

From the website: "OSA is an objected-oriented systems analysis technique, which we understand as the study of a specific domain of interacting objects for the purpose of understanding and documenting their essential characteristics. It has the expressive power to represent reality. Its underlying concepts are based on formal definitions of system data and behavior modeling."