The ITHACA application development approach emphasizes reuse of components, stored in a repository, during all development phases. Methodological support is needed in particular in the first development phases: requirement collection and analysis, and requirement specification. The ITHACA Object-Oriented Methodology (IOOM) is based on the concepts of object-orientation to facilitate composition of reusable specification components, on the concept of role, that permits a flexible composition of specifications, and on the concept of specification refinement level, that allows the developer to examine and develop specifications at different levels of abstraction. Computer based design support associated with the IOOM methodology is discussed.
