USING AN OBJECT-ORIENTED APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF A RELATIONAL DATABASE APPLICATION SYSTEM

Object-oriented technology has been proposed in recent years as a promising approach to increasing programmer productivity and the quality of software development. The traditional development of a database application system distinctively separates a system's behavior and its data by using entity-relationship diagrams, functional decomposition, and process-dependency diagrams. The object-oriented approach, on the other hand, integrates both data and behavior, and this can result in a merging of both software and databases. To gain more insight into the object-oriented approach to the analysis and design of software development, we applied this approach to the development of a simplified hospital administration system. The resulting application system is an object-based system but uses a relational database manager. This illustrates the fact that object-oriented approaches are not limited to object-oriented systems or databases: they can, in fact, be used for more traditional design. This technique may allow easier transition from data-based to object-based systems. Software that is reusable, improved in its design, more reliable, and simpler in its programming and maintenance requirements would truly be an advantage to users and developers alike.