Object-Process Methodology

Rating:
Summary: OPD--A visual programming language
Review: For a long time, I have been looking for a visual programming language to describe my algorithms and program procedures in an elegant way. There are indeed quite a few diagramming tools available for modeling system behaviors, however, none of them is suitable to my demand before I encountered OPD, which is a graphic language of OPM. I¡¯ve been using it to depict many algorithms in my work since I learned it. I¡¯ve also taught my students to use it and they indeed like it. What is more interesting is that the tools accompanying the book can convert OPDs into a real programming language, like Java.

In OPDs, objects and processes exist together to depict both structural and dynamic natures of the system in one diagram, which provides a holistic view of the system. It is natural to use and understand. One of its impressive features is its scaling ability to show different levels of details to handle the complexity issues. Hence, it is also convenient for system modeling, clear for communication among team members, even among technical staff, executives and customers.

In summary, this is a very easy and useful tool. All stakeholders, including technical staff, management executives, professors and students, can have a try. You will like it also.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating methodology of simplicity and usefulness
Review: I have been fascinated by the simplicity and usefulness of the
Object-Process Methodology paradigm and approach expressed in the book. As a
researcher in Science Education I have been grappling with how to represent
complex, technology-enhanced educational systems that involve humans,
processes and educational artifacts. OPM and the OPCAT software enclosed
were very instrumental in enabling me to model and represent the "big
picture" of educational systems I developed. With OPM I was then able to
gradually refine portions of the system to any desired level of detail.
The applicability of OPM to IT-intensive educational systems is a testimony
to the generic nature of the methodology and to the fact that it is useful
in so many domains. The combination of a single simple graphical model that
generates natural language on the fly is really unique and valuable. I
wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone interested in modeling complex
systems, be they of technological, economical, or social nature. The method
is straightforward, easy to learn even for non IT-professionals, and most
rewarding in terms of the quality and clarity of the resulting graphical and
textual model.

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Summary: OPM - Vastly superior to current UML standard
Review: OPM is a methodology designed to facilitate the formal and rigorous description and analysis of systems, be they information systems or physical systems. The striking feature about OPM is that it recognises as peers the notion of Process and Object. This enables OPM to provide true unified modelling of the structural as well as dynamic aspects of a system. This is in contrast to traditional Object Oriented analysis, such as UML, which uses a variety of different modelling formats and
symbols to accomplish the same end. For this reason, I have been using OPM in a professional setting to perform requirements elicitation, systems analysis and the development of precise domain specific ontologies.

Another striking feature of OPM is that it combines a graphics based model, termed Object Process Diagram or OPD, with structured formal declarative statements that complement each interaction depicted on the diagram. These declarative statements are termed Object Process Language or OPL paragraphs. The added value of having both views, graphic and semantic, is that it facilitates non-specialist understanding of the
resultant analysis.

I have used OPM, as outlined by Dr. Dori in this book, to develop an axiomized ontology that describes my company's unique set of Product Configuration Management concepts, which resulted in the generation of hundreds of Object-Process Diagrams and thousands of Object-Process Language statements. Doing this analysis using the constructs provided by traditional UML would have been inconceivable!

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Summary: The way modeling ought to work
Review: OPM is a methodology for modeling systems, technical as well as any other system. In the techical world it compares with UML. OPM is designed with consistant and simple notations, uses simple rules that when combined can be used to model any system (real or informational) to any level of complexity that is desired by the system architect. Also, it integrates object modeling and process modeling in one diagram (although you can still keep them separate if you wanted).

UML uses complex rules to model complex systems, something that is very difficult to make happen, therefore it is very difficult to learn and use. OPM uses simple rules and consistant notations to model complex systems. After simple introductions to the methology, we have been able to start using it in our organization. More powerful and far simpler then UML. The way UML should have been done long time ago.

Rating:
Summary: OPM: Finally a universal tool for system architects
Review: There is an eternal debate between system designers
and architects of software, products and large systems:
Is it ever possible to show structure (the arrangement
of objects) and system behavior (over time) in the same
representation? Dov Dori's book shows convincingly that it can
be done. Particularly powerful is the duality between
graphical system representation and natural language.
Also, the CD-ROM with OPCAT software allows one to follow
the examples in the book and apply OPM directly to a project.
The book is clearly written and will appeal to engineers,
computer scientists and software developers. A refreshing
contrast to the traditional way of looking a object-centered
systems architecting. This begs for more ... in terms of
connecting OPM to other tools such as Design Structure Matrices,
but also for representing highly complex systems over >2 levels
of decomposition.

Rating:
Summary: Object-Process Methodology (OPM)
Review: This book describes how Object-Process Methodology (OPM) CASE can be used as a tool for generating complete system intent specifications by graphical object diagrams, precise semantic and syntactic language, and intuitive symbols, definitions and structures. As systems have become more complex, a prevalent problem in systems development has been the number of accruing errors. These errors can cause catastrophic failure in the worst-case in addition to intolerable schedule delays and cost overruns. Introducing errors as well as difficulty finding and successfully correcting them occurs because of the lack of proper analysis and design tools for complex system specifications. OPM has the attributes to mitigate against the possibility of system failure, providing comprehensive visibility for better schedule and cost control in product development. It enhances reuse of system modules, processes and software routines in different contexts, while reducing the chance of errors. OPM automatically generates intent specifications that are readily understood by both customers and product team members and are translatable to machine control subsystems. OPM is a holistic systems paradigm that extends the Object-Oriented (OO) paradigm and overcomes its major shortcomings by integrating system structure and behavior in a single integrated graphic and natural language model. OPM successfully tackles the task of development and lifecycle management of systems, products and projects. OPM is a significant extension of and a major departure from the OO approach. It incorporates the system static-structural and dynamic-procedural aspects into a single, unified model. Presented as a concise visual formalism by a set of Object-Process Diagrams (OPD set), it is automatically translated into a set of Object-Process Language (OPL) script, a subset of natural English. At the basis of the OPM philosophy is the observation that to faithfully and naturally analyze and design systems in any domain, processes, like objects, should be considered as stand-alone "things" (entities) that are not necessarily encapsulated within objects. This detachment and de-coupling of processes from objects emphasizes the duality and complementarity of objects and processes, and opens the door for structure-behavior unification. At any point in time, objects exist with some structure and state. This is the static aspect of the system. Processes affect objects by changing their states. This is the dynamic aspect of the system. System complexity is managed through a number of graphical scaling options: zooming into and out of processes, unfolding and folding objects, and expressing or suppressing object states. These mechanisms provide for selectively detailing a subset of things while still maintaining the high-level context of the details.

OPM provides a new framework for specifying design intents and capturing the complexity of hardware and software interaction. Through OPL, it is possible to translate the process into a machine executable code. In addition, OPM can capture the dynamic behavior of the hardware attributes and software states in a single integrated graphical and textual language that is understandable by domain experts who have no programming experience. These traits of OPM ease the development effort for evaluating the system reliability during the design stages. Simulation and testing protocols can be automatically generated though future extensions of OPM to reduce lengthy system verification efforts.
The main benefit of OPM is its ability to identify system objects, processes, and the relationships among them in a structured way. The resulting OPD set becomes an excellent framework for identifying how to implement structural and procedural improvements. The resulting OPL script provides a well-defined set of existing and future specifications for the system. The ability to freely switch from text to graphics and back is of great value to understanding the system as a whole with a single graphic and textual model, without the need to consult various models and carry out mental transformation among these various models.
Based on my personal experience, the following points highlight the benefits OPM can bring to the particular projects described in this paper.
1.OPM is an excellent way to represent daily activities, products, processes and other complex things
2.OPM has allowed representing the complete system with its various aspects in a single model. The model specifies the systems function, structure and behavior aspects without sacrificing clarity.
3.OPM can be used as a common language to exchange design among members of a team.
4.Since OPM design is visual and textual at the same time, it is easy to explain the design.
5.OPL is very easy to generate from OPD
6.OPM will be a good tool for documenting the existing processes and as ISO documentation.

Rating:
Summary: Bridging the chasm between system knowledge and modeling
Review: This is a rare book and sorely needed book about system modeling that addresses modeling language from an architect's viewpoint, instead of a domain engineer's viewpoint. Most other modeling languages and books are mostly concerned about the utility of a language in a specific domain. In contrast, OPM intends to address multiple sources of concerns, in a coherent and concise symbol set. For example, UML is heavily geared toward software development, and Petri-Net is intended to describe and diagnose interactive processes and real-time systems. These tools certainly serve the purpose for their respective domain, however, they inherently only reveal a narrowed view of the whole system.

As the title of the book entails, Object-Process Methodology: a holistic systems paradigm, is a language designed to address the emergent properties of system modeling. OPM's semantics enables modelers to realize the explicit relationships between Objects and Process. Without enforcing this concern during modeling and model reading, many system-level intent might be lost. Forcing a system to be described with only objects (OO-design methods/languages) or only processes (procedural-design methods/languages) usually also force modelers to create language-specific artifacts, that could become sources of imprecise model.

The main thesis in this book is that Object and Process must coexist in a single model. The combination of these two types of things could more accurately reflect the ontological structures of human minds. Therefore, it could more readily and effectively help humans to transcribe models into a formal representation. A number of innovative formal language concepts are also mentioned and explained in this book. Some modeling tool implementations are also included in the CD. For example, the automated translation between Object-Process Diagram and Object-Process Language is another invention that would significantly improve the cognitive efficiency for modelers to verify and validate the model semantics. These foundamental features of modeling languages and their cognitive effects on modelers have not been successfully in representing complex systems. This book and this methodology directly tackle this knowledge representation issue at the core of language design.

As a piece of extensive scholarly work on modeling langauges, this summarized and critiqued many aspects of system modeling issues and relevant modeling methods. It discusses and explains a number of language features that are particularly important in graphical modeling languages. For example, the concept of complexity scaling, probablistic processes, and agent representation. The author clearly thought through the needs of a system architect, who needs to be concerned of not just the mechanics of modeling, but also the expressiveness and impact of the system model as an artifact of system building.

Breakthroughs in modeling languages are essential instruments for major breakthroughs in technoIogical development. The development of hardware description language pioneered by Carver Mead triggered a major revolution in the semiconductor industry. For improving the maturity of complex system integration and creation, I believe that this book will present an important foundation from the perspective of language design and system representation. I highly recommend this book to people who are interested in system modeling, language design, and knowledge management.

Rating:
Summary: A must for anyone analyzing or developing systems
Review: You will find this book very useful when you approach a new design and/or development of information systems. The structured and systematic manner of defining objects and processes is so much better than what we all know from old school's DFDs, ORDs and even the UML. The OPM approach takes you one step ahead in the thinking process, making sure that all the participating entities are well thought and with no loose ends. Try it out and you might save 50% of your development cycles.