It is well known that systems analysis as a science is young. It starts its history in the middle of the 20th century. But I can call it the most quickly developing one with out any exaggeration. If telling you about latest achievements in such old field of human knowledge like for example physics, I would capture a period of dozens or even hundreds of years, but with systems analysis it’s impossible to do the same, and the point is not in the youth. The point is in the speed of the systems analysis development process. Opposite to the fundamental sciences where discovery made in the medieval can be useful today without any ceremony, invention within the framework of systems analysis often became unnecessary or even ridicules in two or three years.

So that is why my story is going to be about the most progressive branch of systems analysis – object-oriented analysis or OOA for short which is extremely young. OOA starts its history in the eighties of the 20th century.

The main concept of OOA is object. Object in OOA is an entity in which data and its processors are combined all together. According to this definition a pen can be called an object. It has data – the amount of the ink and the processor of this data called “Write” which affects the amount of the amount of the ink. To use OOA methods successfully you have to cultivate a special way of thinking, people say “you must think in objects”.

Objects can interact with each other in a number of ways those interactions are called relationships. They are association, generalization, dependency, realization and many others.

A description of an object is called “class”. The second main thing in OOA is to understand the difference between “object” and “class”. If I have sketch of a pen on the sheet of paper – that is a description of a pen or “class”. If I produce a real pen made of plastic, with ink and so on… using this sketch, I’ll get the instance or the “object”. Sounds easy but those notions are often mistaken.

So to solve a problem using OOA means to decompose it into objects. Describe those objects using classes. Define relationships between them. And then analyze got network.

As one of the latest achievements in the analytical part of OOA I would like to tell you about patterns. A pattern is a predesigned object scheme. If you have a problem while performing OOA you just pick the suitable pattern and apply it instead of discovering the America.

Of course OOA is a wonderful tool for object-oriented programming but it can be used in any domain. UML visual language and especially its new version UML2 is really useful for any kind of analysis like the analysis of business processes for example.

In conclusion I would like to say that all those new technologies and techniques are really interesting for me. To make a contribution in this is in the list of my global aims.