A Review of Experimental Investigations into Object-Oriented Technology

In recent years there has been a growing interest in empirically investigating object-oriented technology (OOT). Much of this empirical work has been experimental in nature. This paper reviews the published output of such experiments—18 in total—with the twin aims of, first, assessing what has been learnt about OOT and, second, what has been learnt about conducting experimental work. We note that much work has focused upon evaluation of the inheritance mechanism. Whilst such experiments are of some interest, we observe that this may be of less significance to the OOT community than experimenters seem to believe. Instead, OOT workers place more emphasis upon other mechanisms such as composition, components, frameworks, architectural styles and design patterns. This leads us to conclude that the empirical researchers need to ensure that their work keeps pace with technological developments in the fields they aim to investigate.