The object-oriented structured design notation for software design representation

The development of a notation that supports key software structure concepts and design principles, is discussed. The notation should let designers represent modules, interfaces, hidden information, concurrency, message passing, invocation of operations and overall program structure in a comprehensive way. The authors examine three categories of approach to architectural design: object-oriented design, functional decomposition, and data structure design. They present their design notation, called object-oriented structured design (OOSD) which achieves the above-stated goal. They discuss classes in OOSD, its handling of asynchronous processes, and its design methods and rules. Automated support for OOSD is considered.< >