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Software Design

Software Design. Deriving a solution which satisfies software requirements. Topics covered. The design process and design methods Design strategies including object-oriented design and functional decomposition - briefly Design quality attributes. The design process.

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Software Design

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  1. Software Design • Deriving a solution which satisfies software requirements

  2. Topics covered • The design process and design methods • Design strategies including object-oriented design and functional decomposition - briefly • Design quality attributes

  3. The design process • Any design may be modelled as a directed graph made up of entities with attributes which participate in relationships • The system should be described at several different levels of abstraction • Design takes place in overlapping stages. It is artificial to separate it into distinct phases but some separation is usually necessary

  4. Phases in the design process

  5. Design phases • Architectural design Identify sub-systems • Abstract specification Specify sub-systems • Interface design Describe sub-system interfaces • Component design Decompose sub-systems into components • Data structure design Design data structures to hold problem data • Algorithm design Design algorithms for problem functions

  6. Hierarchical design structure

  7. Top-down design • In principle, top-down design involves starting at the uppermost components in the hierarchy and working down the hierarchy level by level • In practice, large systems design is never truly top-down. Some branches are designed before others. Designers reuse experience (and sometimes components) during the design process

  8. Design methods • Structured methods are sets of notations for expressing a software design and guidelines for creating a design • Well-known methods include Structured Design (Yourdon), and JSD (Jackson Method) • Can be applied successfully because theysupport standard notations and ensure designs follow a standard form • Structured methods may be supported with CASE tools

  9. Method components • Many methods support comparable views of a system • A data flow view (data flow diagrams) showing data transformations • An entity-relation view describing the logical data structures • A structural view showing system components and their interactions

  10. Method deficiencies • They are guidelines rather than methods in the mathematical sense. Different designers create quite different system designs • They do not help much with the early, creative phase of design. Rather, they help the designer to structure and document his or her design ideas

  11. Design description • Graphical notations. Used to display component relationships • Program description languages. Based on programming languages but with more flexibility to represent abstract concepts • Informal text. Natural language description. • All of these notations may be used in large systems design

  12. Design strategies • Functional design • The system is designed from a functional viewpoint. The system state is centralised and shared between the functions operating on that state • Object-oriented design • The system is viewed as a collection of interacting objects. The system state is de-centralised and each object manages its own state. Objects may be instances of an object class and communicate by exchanging methods

  13. Functional or DFD view of a compiler Poor example, see Safe Home Alarm System instead

  14. Object-oriented view of a compiler Notice the main difference between this and previous diagram?

  15. Mixed-strategy design • Although it is sometimes suggested that one approach to design is superior, in practice, an object-oriented and a functional-oriented approach to design are complementary • Good software engineers should select the most appropriate approach for whatever sub-system is being designed

  16. Design quality • Design quality is an elusive concept. Quality depends on specific organisational priorities • A 'good' design may be the most efficient, the cheapest, the most maintainable, the most reliable, etc. • The attributes discussed here are concerned with the maintainability of the design • Quality characteristics are equally applicable to function-oriented and object-oriented designs

  17. Cohesion • A measure of how well a component 'fits together' • A component should implement a single logical entity or function • Cohesion is a desirable design component attribute as when a change has to be made, it is localised in a single cohesive component • Various levels of cohesion have been identified

  18. Cohesion levels • Coincidental cohesion (weak) • Parts of a component are simply bundled together • Logical association (weak) • Components which perform similar functions are grouped • For example: output text to screen output line to printer output record to file • Seems ok • Problem is it carries out a range of similar but different actions • No single well defined action

  19. Cohesion levels • Temporal cohesion (weak) • Components which are activated at the same time are grouped • For example: clear screen open file Initialise total • again not related • solution is to make initialisation module all other specialised modules: call init_terminal call init_files call init_calculations

  20. Cohesion levels • Communicational cohesion (medium) • All the elements of a component operate on the same data • e.g. display and log temperature • Sequential cohesion (medium) • The output for one part of a component is the input to another part

  21. Cohesion levels • Functional cohesion (strong) • optimal type of cohesion • performs a single well-defined action on a single data object • e.g. calculate average • Each part of a component is necessary for the execution of a single function • Object cohesion (strong) • Each operation provides functionality which allows object attributes to be modified or inspected

  22. Cohesion as a design attribute • Not well-defined. Often difficult to classify cohesion • Inheriting attributes from super-classes weakens cohesion • To understand a component, the super-classes as well as the component class must be examined

  23. Coupling • A measure of the strength of the inter-connections between system components • Loose coupling means component changes are unlikely to affect other components • Shared variables or control information exchange lead to tight coupling • Loose coupling can be achieved by state decentralisation (as in objects) and component communication via parameters or message passing

  24. Tight coupling

  25. Loose coupling

  26. Coupling levels • Altering another modules code (LISP, Assembler) • Modifying data within another module • fault that appears in one module may be due to another • complicated understanding and debugging • can be done via global variables or pointers or call be reference in C++/ Java • Shared or global data

  27. Coupling levels • Procedure call with a parameter that is a switch (or a function pointer in C) • io (command, device buffer, length); • where command is 0,1,2 for read, write open; better to use • read( device, buffer, length); • Procedure call with parameters that are pure data • ideal is call by value, where a small number of parameters are used anda copy of the data is passed to the procedure invoked • clear what information is being communicated

  28. Coupling levels • Passing a serial data stream • most ideal situation • one module passes stream of data to another • once passed data is outside control of process/module • like piping in UNIX • data can be thought of as a temporary intermediate file • only possible in languages that support concurrency such as Ada and Erlang and Parallel C

  29. Coupling and Inheritance • Object-oriented systems are loosely coupled because there is no shared state and objects communicate using message passing • However, an object class is coupled to its super-classes. Changes made to the attributes or operations in a super-class propagate to all sub-classes. Such changes must be carefully controlled

  30. Cohesion, Coupling & Testing • High Cohesion ensures each unit provides a set of related capabilities and makes the tests of those capabilities easier to maintain • Low Coupling allows each unit to be effectively tested in isolation

  31. Understandability • Related to several component characteristics • Cohesion. Can the component be understood on its own? • Naming. Are meaningful names used? • Documentation. Is the design well-documented? • Complexity. Are complex algorithms used? • Informally, high complexity means many relationships between different parts of the design. hence it is hard to understand • Most design quality metrics are oriented towards complexity measurement. They areof limited use

  32. Adaptability • A design is adaptable if: • Its components are loosely coupled • It is well-documented and the documentation is up to date • There is an obvious correspondence between design levels (design visibility) • Each component is a self-contained entity (tightly cohesive) • To adapt a design, it must be possible to trace the links between design components so that change consequences can be analysed

  33. Design traceability

  34. Adaptability and inheritance • Inheritance dramatically improves adaptability. Components may be adapted without change by deriving a sub-class and modifying that derived class • However, as the depth of the inheritance hierarchy increases, it becomes increasingly complex. It must be periodically reviewed and restructured • new trend in this area known as refactoring, associated with the lightweight process of Extreme Programming (XP)

  35. Advantages of inheritance • It is an abstraction mechanism which may be used to classify entities - polymorphism • It is a reuse mechanism at both the design and the programming level - very useful in framework • The inheritance graph is a source of organisational knowledge about domains and systems

  36. Problems with inheritance • Object classes are not self-contained. they cannot be understood without reference to their super-classes • Designers have a tendency to reuse the inheritance graph created during analysis. Can lead to significant inefficiency • The inheritance graphs of analysis, design and implementation have different functions and should be separately maintained

  37. Inheritance and OOD • There are differing views as to whether inheritance is fundamental to OOD. • View 1. Identifying the inheritance hierarchy or network is a fundamental part of object-oriented design. Obviously this can only be implemented using an OOPL. • View 2. Inheritance is a useful implementation concept which allows reuse of attribute and operation definitions. Identifying an inheritance hierarchy at the design stage places unnecessary restrictions on the implementation • Inheritance introduces complexity and this is undesirable, especially in critical systems

  38. UML associations • Objects and object classes participate in relationships with other objects and object classes • In the UML, a generalised relationship is indicated by an association • Associations may be annotated with information that describes the association • Associations are general but may indicate that an attribute of an object is an associated object or that a method relies on an associated object • Be careful to distinguish between a UML dependemcy and an association

  39. An association model

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