Object Oriented Role Analysis and Modeling

The Object Oriented Role Analysis and Modeling (OOram) is a method, based on the concept of role, for performing object-oriented modeling. OOram is a precursor for the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

Originally (1989) coined Object Oriented Role Analysis, Synthesis and Structuring (OORASS), the method focuses on describing patterns of interaction without connecting the interaction to particular objects/instances. OOram was originally developed by Trygve Reenskaug (1996), a professor at the University of Oslo and the founder of the Norwegian IT company Taskon.

Enterprise models created according to OOram may have a number of views, with each view presenting certain aspects of a model. The following ten views are proposed:

  1. Area of concern view: Textual description of a phenomenon represented in the role model.
  2. Stimulus-response view: Describes how environment roles may trigger activities in the organization (stimulus), together with the effect (response).
  3. Role list view: List describing all roles of a role model together with attributes and textual explanation.
  4. Semantic view: Describes meaning of roles and relationships between roles.
  5. Collaboration view: Describes patterns of roles and message paths.
  6. Interface view: Describes all messages that can be sent along a message path.
  7. Scenario view: Provides a sample sequence of messages flowing between roles (a concrete example).
  8. Process view: Describes data flow between roles and associated activities performed by the roles.
  9. State diagram view: For each role, the legal states can be described together with messages that triggers transitions.
  10. Method specification view: Describes what messages to send for each method belonging to a role. May also specify procedures to perform.

OOram suggests a varied mix of formal and informal notations and languages for representing and communicating models. Which view to use depends upon the needs in a particular situation.

Famous quotes containing the words object, role, analysis and/or modeling:

    There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe.
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.
    John Lennon (1940–1980)

    Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.
    Joseph Featherstone (20th century)

    The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.
    Sherry Turkle (b. 1948)