Question

BACKGROUND

Prior to the 1990’s, practically all organizations created applications using the traditional approach on mainframe computers. As object-oriented systems became more prevalent and offered many advantages over process oriented development platforms, organizations struggled with the dual task of leveraging their investments in their current technological infrastructure and changing their approach to development. This assignment is an example of an organization’s struggles with this kind of change:

SCENARIO

Joe Brown, the president of Roanoke Manufacturing, requested that Jack Jones, the MIS department manager, investigate the viability of selling their products over the web. Currently, the MIS department is still using an IBM mainframe as their primary deployment environment. As a first step, Jack contacted his friends at IBM to see if they had any suggestions as to how Roanoke Manufacturing could move toward supporting sales in an electronic commerce environment while keeping their mainframe as their main system. His friends explained that IBM now supports Java and Linux on their mainframes. Furthermore, Jack learned that IBM owns Rational, the creator of UML and the Unified Process. As such, they suggested that Jack investigate using object-oriented systems as a basis for developing the new system. They also suggested that using the Rational Unified Process (RUP), Java, and virtual Linux machines as a way to support the movement toward a distributed electronic commerce system would protect his current investment in his legacy systems while allowing the new system to be developed in a more modern manner.

QUESTION

Even though Jack’s IBM friends were very persuasive, Jack is still a little wary about moving his operation from a structured systems approach to this new object-oriented approach. Assuming you are one of Jack’s IBM friends, how would you convince him to move toward using an object-oriented systems development method such as RUP, and using Java and Linux as a basis for developing and deploying the new system on Roanoke Manufacturing’s current mainframe.

REQUIREMENTS

Write a one to two page paper on how you would convince Jack to pursue the changes suggested by his IBM friends. You should focus on the advantages of the object-oriented approach over the structured systems approach, and how such a change would make sense from a strategic standpoint.

Any programming language is fine.

Answer 1

Hi Jack,

Moving the development from a approach to another is a very big step but this big step is very useful and effective. This is a good move to moving your development approach from structured systems approach to object-oriented approach. In Structured Analysis, the focus is only on process and procedures. Modeling techniques used in it are DFD(Data Flow Diagram), Flowcharts etc. Structured systems approach is old and is not preferred.

Let's find the benefits of Java (Object Oriented Programming language):

• Inheritance- redundant code and extend the use of existing classes
• Easily upgraded from small to large system
• Abstraction- representing essential features without including background details
• Encapsulation- wrapping the data and code

Object Oriented Programming have so many advantage over structured systems approach. Here are some of the point :

Structured programming mainly focuses on the procedure to be used to handle data first while Object Oriented Programming (OOP) focuses on data itself.

Program is divided into number of submodules or functions in Structured programming but in Object Oriented Programming (OOP) the program is organized by having number of classes and objects.

Structured Programming provides less reusability, more function dependency but Object Oriented Programming provides more reusability, less function dependency.

That's all Jack. If you have any question please comment below. Please give positive rating if you like it.