Beginning C# 2008 Objects: From Concept to Code

10.1. Identifying Appropriate Classes

Our first challenge in object modeling is to determine what classes we'll need as our system building blocks. Unfortunately, the process of class identification is rather "fuzzy"; it relies heavily on intuition, prior modeling experience, and familiarity with the subject area, or domain, of the system to be developed. So, how does an object-modeling novice ever get started? One tried and true (but somewhat tedious) procedure for identifying candidate classes is to use the "hunt and gather" method: that is, to hunt for and gather a list of all nouns and noun phrases from the project documentation set and to then use a process of elimination to whittle this list down into a set of appropriate classes.

In the ...