Enhancing software reuse with intelligent documentation based on object oriented inheritance

To achieve software reuse has been an aim of software engineering since the late 1960's. Software reuse increases programmer productivity, and can increase the quality of software. New technologies, such as object oriented programming, have been designed with the intent of enhancing the ability to reuse software, but have been applied with limited success. This thesis focusses on the problems with reusing software using object oriented inheritance. It proposes that the documentation methods currently available for object oriented inheritance do not have the key programming factors that are claimed to enable reuse. A methodology and environment for inheritance is developed that enhances software reuse. The Extended Viola Intelligent Documentation System (EVIDS) is an experiment in utilising the methodology and environment features proposed.