Re: Documenting Object Oriented Applications

[David Carr <davecarr -at- PCNET -dot- COM>]

I have come across occasions where the systems people wanted me to
document object-oriented constructs for other systems people. I was
familiar with the concepts of OO because I'd worked for a firm that
developed white papers, case studies and other collateral for an OO
consulting group at IBM.

The client was an insurance company that used Smalltalk to create a set
of object-oriented frameworks for solving a range of business problems.
This is OO on a higher level than you're talking about when you say that
any application with a GUI is object-oriented. The insurance company
wanted to parcel the business logic of its applications into neat
objects, which could be reused throughout the company. In order for this
reuse to occur, the programming interfaces to these objects needed to be
documented. And the company realized that if they waited for the
programmers to do the documentation on their own, it often just wouldn't
happen.

We helped by bringing in a mix of writers and more technical people who
took ownership of this systems documentation process. The project is
still continuing, almost two years later, as the system continues to
evolve.
--
David Carr, Carr Communications
13 South Meadows, Woodbury CT 06798
Phone/Fax: (203) 263-2180

Carr Communications http://www.pcnet.com/~davecarr/
Connecticut OO Users Group http://www.pcnet.com/~davecarr/cooug/
WebWeek http://www.webweek.com/

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