VOM - visuelle Objektmodellierung

The major challenge of today's software industry may be circumscribed with the buzz words faster - cheaper - better. In the area of software engineering there is a strong search for powerful concepts to meet this challenge. The object-oriented development paradigm with the possibility of efficient reuse of existing software components is today's most promising issue to ease this situation. However, object-orientation alone is no panacea. In addition, software development calls for an integrated method which supports all phases of the development process. Such a method requires a representation technique which can be used in all phases. To address this issue, VOM (Visual Object Modelling) - a representation technique based on the object-oriented paradigm - has been developed. This thesis starts with a survey of several fields which are important for understanding VOM. Next, the basic concepts underlying VOM are presented. Based on this introduction, the syntax and semantics of the VOM constructs are discussed in detail. In order to demonstrate the use of VOM, the modelling of an example is given. To place VOM in the current scene of methods, a comparison with other representation techniques is drawn. Finally, ideas for further development of VOM are presented and implications of VOM on software quality are discussed.