Developing a company wide estimating, design and installation system (PROTECT) using object-oriented programming

Object-oriented modelling and design is a new way of thinking about problems, using models organised around real-world concepts. The authors present an object-oriented approach to software development, based on modelling objects from a fire protection environment. The model is then used to build a language-independent design, organized around those objects. The authors also describe some object modelling techniques used in mapping the object-oriented design into an non-object-oriented programming language for constructing the system, and a detailed evaluation and review of Microsoft Fortran is presented for this object-oriented application. The advantages of using the object-oriented methodology in the fire protection environment are reviewed in terms of cost, speed, accuracy and long-term maintenance of the software. >