Abstract

In object-oriented (OO) software engineering, objects, attributes and processes are often specified in natural language descriptions. Following a precise methodology, we here look at the analysis phase of OO software engineering and show that robust computational linguistic tools initially developed for knowledge extraction from text can provide useful support during this initial but crucial phase of any OO software development project. 1. Introduction 1.1. The role of text and narrative descriptions in OO analysis The use of nouns, pronouns and noun phrases to identify objects and classes during the early stages of OO analysis is not a new idea. As reported in [10], it was first proposed by Russell J. Abbott then popularised by Grady Booch, both in 1983. This might seem to be a restrictive way to look at OO analysis, and there is still disagreement as to what extent noun phrases should influence the output of this phase. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that a majority of modern OO m...

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