eberard@bse.com (Edward V. Berard) (11/23/90)
Folks, I have been spending a great deal of time on the road, both consulting and giving seminars. Unfortunately, I will not get to spend any appreciable time in my office until February. However, I thought you might like to hear some of what I'm hearing. What follows are some random observations: 1. The front-page article in the November 5, 1990 ComputerWorld, i.e., "IBM On Object-Oriented Path" by Rosemary Hamilton, is causing quite a stir. Many organizations are citing it as one of the reasons that they are now giving serious consideration to object-oriented approaches. 2. The majority of those using, or giving serious consideration to object-oriented approaches seem to be people doing real-time or communications-related applications. The problems they most commonly cite are: - the lack of an adequate object-oriented database system - the lack of knowledge regarding distributed object-oriented applications development - the lack of tools for embedded systems development, i.e., tools which can be used with object-oriented programming languages There are indeed some solutions to the above problems. However, there is also a dearth of options. 3. People doing classic MIS applications make up about 20% of the people to whom I am currently talking. The problems they most often cite are: - The lack of an "industrial strength" object-oriented database system. - The lack of an overall approach to object-oriented software engineering. (These people are used to Information Engineering and the more classic "Yourdon approaches.") 4. Everyone is interested in computer aided software engineering (CASE) tools for object-oriented software engineering. Many say they have not been impressed with vendors who seem to have made more changes in their marketing literature than in their traditional (i.e., functional decomposition) CASE tools. 5. Transitioning an organization to an object-oriented approach is very difficult. Here are some reasons: - Finding a consistent overall training capability is difficult. Analysis training from vendor X may not be compatible with design training from vendor Y, and both are not compatible with programming language training from vendor Z. - Many people are so turned off by the religious zealotry of some in the object-oriented community, they do not like to admit that they are interested in the topic. Further, overzealous trainers and consultants are often reluctant to point out the pitfalls of an object-oriented approach. - Some organizations think of object-oriented software engineering purely in terms of programming languages. They make the mistake of buying a C++ compiler, and neglect to get training. Six months later, their programmers are still writing in C. 6. Interest in object-oriented technology is definitely expanding at a rapid pace. I'll try to post more later. -- Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edward V. Berard | Phone: (301) 353-9652 Berard Software Engineering, Inc. | FAX: (301) 353-9272 18620 Mateney Road | E-Mail: eberard@bse.com Germantown, Maryland 20874 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------