Functional Method Engineering

Examination of the notion of situation shows that it does not reflect so much the method characteristics as the characteristics of projects/method implementations. By treating methods as functions the authors are able to postulate functional characteristics of methods. By including these in the description of a situation, they are able to describe the functional aspects of a situation. This functional situation can be used for retrieving functionally similar methods. Functional similarity is abstracted out in the notion of functional method. That is, a functional situation gives to the authors a functional method which can correspond to one or more methods. Each method is retrieved and it is then adapted to yield the desired method. Since they rely so heavily on the notion of a function, the authors refer to their approach as functional method engineering. The implications of the approach on CAME tool design are considered and illustrated through a running example.