ABSTRACT

Object-oriented analysis and design are considered as the most popular software development methods for the 1990s. Numerous graphical notations have already been designed for this purpose. Unfortunately, the lack of a theoretical framework results in ambiguities in object-oriented notions and other problems such as concurrency issues. Although a number of formal object-oriented specification languages have been proposed by academics, they are not linked with the popular methodologies. Practitioners are reluctant to use these unfamiliar formal tools. We propose a 3-dimensional net structure behind object-oriented analysis and design. The concepts of classes, objects, inheritance, overloading and message passing can be modelled within the framework. Some of the concepts can be visualized as a projection of the general model into 2-dimensional space. The model can be implemented in terms of existing object-oriented graphical notations. A development environment using these notations as front-end user-interface is being developed so that the formal framework is transparent to users.

	1.	This research is supported in part by a grant of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.
	2.	Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. Email:

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