Abstract
M.Com. (Computer Auditing)
During the last few decades the hardware of a computer system has undergone repeated revolutions. On the other hand the software development process has remained largely unchanged. The advent of the Information Age has, however, necessitated major
improvements in the software development process. Object-Orientated Programming is
seen as the vehicle by which this can be achieved.
The use of object-orientation involves the auditor in two major areas. Firstly, the auditor
may be involved in advising as to which systems engineering process to use and
secondly, to assess the influence of the systems engineering process on the control
environment of the client's computer system. In this dissertation, both the use of object orientation as a systems engineering methodology and the implications of this
methodology on the control environment are discussed.
Object-Orientated Programming can be broken down into the three main features,
encapsulation, inheritance and interfaces. Encapsulation implies that both the data and
processes that are permissible on that data, should be encapsulated as a single entity,
known as an object. Inheritance on the other hand can be thought of as a specialisation of
objects, to form a hierarchy of objects. Inheritance is, therefore, a way of sharing
information between objects but with additional features to change or add certain attributes
or methods of other objects. The external powers of an object are completely
circumscribed by message passing. The only way in which an object can be addressed is to send a message to the object. This is done by the specific interfaces between the
objects.