OBJECT-PRESERVING CLASS TRANSFORMATIONS

Reorganization of classes for object-oriented programming and object-oriented database design has recently received considerable attention in the literature. In this paper a small set of primitive transformations is presented which forms an orthogonal basis for object-preserving class reorganizations. This set is proven to be correct, complete, and minimal. The primitive transformations help form a theoretical basis for class organization and are a powerful tool for reasoning about particular organizations.