Patent ID: 8707250

Claim:
An automated method for generating a domain model for an object-oriented software application, the method comprising: providing a user at a data processing system with a user interface having features to guide the user through a process of (a) selecting phrases to represent particular domain-specific concepts for a domain of an object-oriented software application and (b) classifying the selected phrases according to respective object-oriented modeling concepts; presenting a business description document in the user interface; after presenting the business description document in the user interface, receiving user input selecting phrases from the business description document as representative of corresponding domain-specific concepts for the object-oriented software application; receiving, at the data processing system, user input identifying a phrase among the selected phrases; after receiving the user input identifying the phrase, presenting a predetermined list of characteristics in the user interface, wherein different characteristics among the list of characteristics correspond to different object-oriented modeling concepts; after presenting the predetermined list of characteristics in the user interface, receiving user input selecting a characteristic for the identified phrase from the predetermined list of characteristics; and in response to the user input selecting the characteristic for the identified phrase, storing data in the data processing system to classify the selected phrase as pertaining to an object-oriented modeling concept that corresponds to the selected characteristic; wherein the different object-oriented modeling concepts comprise at least three modeling concepts from the group consisting of classes, attributes, inheritance, aggregation, and association relationships.