To design a software model that serves the needs of the users, the car dealership example is translated into:
In this example, the salesperson is the user. The user's tasks can include:
From this analysis, the objects that should be part of our software model can be identified. These include a car object, car lot object, customer object, customer list object, worksheet object, worksheet list object, salesperson object, sales manager object, and finance manager object.
To simplify this explanation, consider the car object only. Each car object represents a real car for sale in the car lot. A car object contains descriptive information about the corresponding real car, such as its year, make, model, price, factory-installed options, color, and vehicle identification number. Because the primary purpose of a car object is to convey information, the car object is a data object.