A software design model in which objects contain both data and the instructions that work on the data. It is becoming widely deployed in distributed computing. Major object-oriented programming languages include C++, Smalltalk, Objective C, Object COBOL, and Eiffel.

The art and science of manipulating data, like programming, in the form of "objects", streamlining ways of identifying and addressing business problems and creating applications. Its applications are built up from objects containing both information and the intelligence needed to process that data in a single unit; particularly useful in workgroups where it lets a document contain its own security and routing information. Standards are being discussed by several bodies including the Object Management Group with its Object Management Architecture. Dogged by acronyms and competing methodologies, object technology is a growing phenomenon.

Any application development that is designed to use data packaged into objects. See CORBA.