Object-Oriented Essential Modeling

Essential modeling extracts essential user requirements [4, 6, 11. Here, we propose using essential model to identify, organize, and present essential requirements of users for object-oriented projects. Comparcd with an analysis model, an essential model does not decompose the problem of a project or suggest any solution for the problem. An essential model crystallizes externally visible requirements. It presents user-required domain objects and hnction units. But, it entails no implication on how to implement the objects and functions. An essential model entails an interface as well as a boundary between a system and its environment. We present the interface with a UML interaction diagram, in which the system is represented with an object that interacts with external actors. This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we define the notion of essential model. We describe techniques for building essential models in Section 3. Relationships of an essential model with other object-oriented artifacts are described in Section 4. Section 5 summaries the paper.