Every advance of software technology has led to the discovery of new barriers. The introduction of a new software technology expands the domain of solvable problems while revealing an undiscovered country of unsolvable problems. Generally, the advances have been revolutions which changed the paradigms defining common practice. Each revolution has threatened the existing order while it offered new power. The effect of this phenomenon has shaped the history of software technology into a series of searches for a "magic bullet". What is the new approach which will break the latest barrier down? There are problems with such a mind-set. One is that we come to expect paradigm shifts based on the calendar, and not necessarily on real progress. How do we decide if a technique is a real advance or a passing fancy? Another is that we used to integrate new philosophies into our paradigms, where now we adopt complete new paradigms, and discard what has gone before.

The current candidate for the holy grail is object-orientation. Since simulation is a software technology consumer, we view the possibilities of object-orientation with interest and concern. What problems will an object-orientation approach help us resolve and how? This paper presents a software engineering examination of the effect of object-orientation on simulation software. We review the fundamentals of an object-orientation. We expand on this understanding by discussing a contrived example of simulation software. Having defined the object-oriented methodology, we review the goals and principles which define software engineering, as a basis for our evaluation. Finally, we analyze the effects of an object-orientation for simulation software and draw conclusions about its utility.