A comparison of structured analysis and object oriented analysis: An experimental study

Despite the fact that object oriented paradigm is actually widely adopted for software analysis, design, and implementation, there are still a large number of companies that continue to utilize the structured approach to develop software analysis and design. The fact is that the current worldwide agreement for object orientation is not supported by enough empirical evidence on advantages and disadvantages of object orientation vs. other paradigms in different phases of the software development process. In this work we describe an empirical study focused on comparing the time required for analyzing a data management system by using both object orientation and a structural technique. We choose the approach indicated by the Rational Unified Process, and the Structured Analysis and Design Technique, as instances of object oriented and structured analysis techniques, respectively. The empirical study that we present considers both an uncontrolled and a controlled experiment with Master students. Its aim is to analyze the effects of those techniques to software analysis both for software development from scratch, and enhancement maintenance, respectively. Results show no significant difference in the time required for developing or maintaining a software application by applying those two techniques, whatever is the order of their application. However we found two major tendencies regarding object orientation: 1) it is more sensitive to subjects' peculiarities, and 2) it is able to provide some reusability advantages already at the analysis level. Since such result concerns a one-hour-size enhancement maintenance, we expect significant benefits from using object orientation, in case of real-size extensions.