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Many object-oriented information systems share an architectural style that emphasizes flexibility and run-time adaptability. Business rules are stored externally to the program such as in a database or XML files instead of in code. The object model that the user cares about is part of the database, and the object model of the code is just an interpreter of the users' object model. We call these systems "Adaptive Object-Models", because the users' object model is interpreted at runtime and canbe changed with immediate (but controlled) effects on the system interpreting it. The real power in Adaptive Object-Models is that they have a definition of a domain model and rules for its integrity and can be configured by domain exports external to the execution of the program.This paper describes the Adaptive Object-Model architecture along with its strengths and weaknesses. It illustrates the Adaptive Object-Model architectural style by describing a framework for Medical Observations (following Fowler's Analysis Patterns) that we built.

Agile Methods propose a new way of looking at software development that questions many of the beliefs of conventional Software Engineering. Agile methods such as Extreme Programming (XP) have been very effective in producing high-quality software in real-world projects with strict time constraints.Nevertheless, most university courses and industrial training programs are still based on old-style heavyweight methods. This article, based on our experiences teaching XP in academic and industrial environments, presents effective ways of teaching students and professionals on how to develop high-quality software following the principles of agile software development. We also discuss related work in the area, describe real-world cases, and discuss open problems not yet resolved.

According to the extensive 50-year-old body of knowledge in object-oriented programming and design, good software designs are, among other characteristics, lowly coupled, highly cohesive, extensible, comprehensible, and not fragile. However, with the increased complexity and heterogeneity of contemporary software, this might not be enough. This paper discusses the practical challenges of object-oriented design in modern software development. We focus on three main challenges: (1) how technologies, frameworks, and architectures pressure developers to make design decisions that they would not take in an ideal scenario, (2) the complexity of current realworld problems require developers to devise not only a single, but several models for the same problem that live and interact together, and (3) how existing quality assessment techniques for object-oriented design should go beyond high-level metrics. Finally, we propose an agenda for future research that should be tackled by both scientists and practitioners soon. This paper is a call for arms for more reality-oriented research on the objectoriented software design field. Index Terms-software design, class design, object-oriented design, domain modeling, software engineering, software architecture, object-oriented programming.

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