Designing Software Architectures as Knowledge Specializations - Computer Software and Applications Conference, 1996. COMPSAC '96., Proceedings of 20th Internation

Object-oriented methods aim at providing natural ways for decomposing (or composing) a system into (from) objects that correspond to concepts in the customer’s problem domain. The identified objects are the basic building blocks of the object-oriented system to be constructed. In order not to disregard relevant objects, most methods advise software engineers to take dedicated steps such as reading books about the problem domain, interviewing customers, etc. We consider two important concems in understanding the problem domain. First, it is very important to identify all the objects that are required for defining a consistent system, at least in its minimum configuration. Second, identified objects must serve as composable building blocks to construct robust, adaptable and reusable architectures. It has been shown in [2] that the choice of architectural style can have far-reaching consequences because they shape the analysis of the problem and the expression of the design.