J. Sametinger, A. Stritzinger, A Documentation Scheme for Object-oriented Software Systems, OOPS Messenger, ACM Press, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 6-17, July 1993. DOI: 10.1145/165507.165513
he object-oriented programming paradigm improves the reusability of software considerably. Suitable documentation must be provided in order to facilitate software reuse, however. Extensive reuse of existing software components requires increased maintenance activity and hence enhances the importance of system documentation. An adequate scheme should help to achieve higher documentation quality.
In this paper we provide a documentation scheme that aims to fulfill the documentation needs of both reusing and maintaining personnel. This scheme distinguishes among overview, external view, and internal view of both static and dynamic aspects of software components. The various views are described and illustrated by examples. The goal is to provide guidelines for writing documentation of object-oriented software systems and for evaluating the completeness of existing documentation.