Keynote address - data abstraction and hierarchy
OOPSLA '87 Addendum to the proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications (Addendum)
The Unified Modeling Language user guide
The Unified Modeling Language user guide
Real-time UML (2nd ed.): developing efficient objects for embedded systems
Real-time UML (2nd ed.): developing efficient objects for embedded systems
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We describe a very intricate case of highly correlated bio-processes: the liver fibrogenic cascade, by using a set of tools from object-oriented design (OOD). OOD methods were designed for the abstract specification of complex software prior to programming. It appears that OOD methods can be a fruitful tool for the abstract description of biological processes apparently quite far away from software engineering. We give a detailed view of the fibrogenic cascade within the liver using the now standard tool of OOD: Unified Modeling Language (UML) and one extension: Real-Time UML.OOD methods enforce the important role of concepts such as modularity, classes, methods and their inheritance hierarchies as well as primitives for concurrent process synchronization and cooperation. These concepts are surprisingly quite relevant for specifying bio-processes, and unexpectedly, they suggest an extension of the strict evolutionary explanation of the processes involved. As well as describing bio-structures and their interactions, we could consider evolutionary description of classes and processes. In particular, the OOD inheritance concept seems to be significant as an extension to gradualism. It suggests that DNA could encode, in Universal-Turing-Machine like fashion, the hierarchies of classes of molecular structures and perhaps the process templates associated with methods.