OMT Object Model
2. Background
The OMT Object diagram is part of the Object Modeling Technique (OMT). OMT is a language independent graphical notation, which was developed to be part of an object-oriented approach to software development. It came out of the work of James Rumbaugh at the General Electrics Research and Development department in Schenectady, New York. Rumbaugh originally developed an object-oriented language called DSM, which was developed at the same time as C++. He came up with an orginal notation for the language in conjunction with Mary Loomis and Ashwin Shah, who were working for the Calma Corporation at the time (about 1985). The concepts were developed by Rumbaugh and his colleagues at General Electric and this became the Object Modeling Technique (OMT), which they described in the book "Object Oriented Modeling and Design" published by Prentice Hall in 1991. (actually the book was published late 1990, but the copyright date was set on 1991. Since the publishing of this book, OMT has been widely used around the world.
The OMT consists of three related but different viewpoints each capturing important aspects of the system. The object model represents the static, structural "data" aspects of a system, while the other two models (dynamic and functional model) describe the transformational and functional aspects of a system.
The object model is used to describe the structure of objects in a system, by representing graphically by means of object diagrams containing object classes.
In these diagrams the classes define the attribute values & operations of each object instance. Furthermore and object diagram contains associations to describe the relations between different classes.