Covering the breadth of a large topic, this book provides a thorough grounding in object--oriented concepts, the software development process, UML and multi--tier technologies. After covering some basic ground work underpinning OO software projects, the book follows the steps of a typical development project (Requirements Capture -- Design -- Specification & Test), showing how an abstract problem is taken through to a concrete solution. The book is programming language agnostic -- so code is kept to a minimum to avoid detail and deviation into implementation minutiae. A single case study running through the text provides a realistic example showing development from an initial proposal through to a finished system. Key artifacts such as the requirements document and detailed designs are included. For each aspect of the case study, there is an exercise for the reader to produce similar documents for a different system.