Re: HOOD?

[john@assen.demon.co.uk (John McCabe)]

Franz.Kruse@erno.de (Franz Kruse) wrote:


>What is the general opinion of the Ada community about HOOD as a design method?

>Franz Kruse


I can't tell you the general opinion, only my opinion having used it
over the last few years - only up to the 3.1 definition.

I think it works out as a fairly reasonable method, the only pitfall
being that it couldn't handle "provided data" after version 3.0. From
a purist point of view this is good for encapsulation and information
hiding etc, but it can be bad for performance. Obviously the method
isn't going to force you not to modify your code to break the rules,
but if you're using a tool, you then get to the point where your
design and your implementation (code) start to diverge.

The other major problem with it is a lack of tool support. There never
were many tools, they weren't particularly good anyway (especially
HOOD Nice from Intecs - IPSYS is much better and still supported
because of the EFA contract), and they appear to be being dropped from
companies' repertoires.

Finally, the hierarchy could cause problems with Ada 83, and (at least
up to 3.1) the Object Based, rather than Object-Oriented nature was
not totally ideally suited to e.g. C++ or Ada 95 (apparently).

On the whole, it was OK but I think there are probably more suitable
methods for most things.



Best Regards
John McCabe <john@assen.demon.co.uk>