Centralized, distributed responsibility, and decoupled object-oriented software designs [for power systems]

Developers of object-oriented software typically go through three stages of growth in becoming experts. In the first stage encapsulation is applied. During the second stage the developer begins to distribute responsibility among fundamental OOA (object-oriented analysis) objects. Finally, in the third stage of growth, the developer adds classes that do not belong to the problem domain, but which provide decoupling of the domain objects. This is the OOD (object-oriented design) stage. These stages of developer growth are reviewed in light of three solutions to a simple problem. The potential for the application of OOD in power system software development is accessed.