A cognitive foundation for comparing object-oriented analysis methods

Presents a framework for examining constructs found in object-oriented methods. The framework consists of a formal information systems model, called MIMIC (morphological information model of instances and classes), which is based on a theory of classification. MIMIC is used to evaluate two object-oriented modeling methods. The comparison shows that the constructs of these methods partly reflect the theory of concepts embedded in MIMIC. However, each method has certain deficiencies in representing knowledge. The results highlight the value of using a formal theoretical foundation to compare modeling methods