Abstract :
The paper presents the hypothesis that in order to produce a software architecture for a system that maintains its integrity in the face of continuous systems design iterations, it must be based upon reusable, evolvable and combinable autonomous software components. A system architecture that is based upon this premise will enable the conceptualization and design of new system requirements in a flexible and modular fashion. It describes the object-oriented methodology and how it may be used to construct a system from reusable, autonomous software components that can be independently developed, evolved and provisioned within the target system. In order to evaluate object-oriented techniques and compare them with conventional function-oriented techniques, a prototype switching system has been built using these techniques. The results of these evaluations are presented
