Object-oriented technology and domain analysis

Domain analysis makes a necessary contribution in supporting systematic reuse: a focus on understanding and modeling common capabilities within related software applications and the nature of and reasons for variability. Traditionally, domain analysis has been based on structured analysis approaches such as data flow and entity relation modeling or on library taxonomy techniques such as faceted classification. More recently, domain analysis has begun to use object oriented analysis techniques as well as semantic modeling and other knowledge engineering methods. Object oriented technology provides some key abstractions that support reuse. New object oriented approaches in scenarios, use cases, frameworks, and design patterns have blurred many of the distinctions between domain and object oriented analyses. Neither domain analysis nor object oriented analysis has yielded the desired reuse track record. Can we move toward approaches that use the best practices of domain and object oriented analysis to produce what might be called “software reuse that´s worth it?”