Quality Design
Concepts – I
Lecture # 11
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Recap
Introduced software design and how it
relates with software quality assurance
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Today’s Lecture
Design process and software quality
assurance
Design model and software quality
assurance
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Design Process
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Software design sits at the technical kernel
of software engineering and is applied
regardless of the software process model
that is used
The design process produces a data
design, an architectural design, an
interface design, and a component design
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Data Design
The data design transforms the
information domain model created during
analysis into the data structures that will
be required to implement the software
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Architectural Design
It defines the relationship between major
structural elements of the software.
Architectural design representation is
derived from system specification, analysis
model, and interaction of subsystems
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Interface Design
Interface design describes how the
software communicates within itself, with
systems that interoperate with it, and with
humans who use it. An interface implies a
flow of information
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Component Design
Component-level design transforms
structural elements of software
architecture into a procedural description
of software components
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Think the Right Way
To achieve a good design, people have to
think the right way about how to conduct
the design activity
Katharine Whitehead
Let’ now discuss the design principles,
which help us to follow the design process
accurately
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Design Process Principles - 1
The design process should not suffer from
“tunnel vision”
The design should not reinvent the wheel
The design should “minimize the
intellectual” distance between the software
and the problem as it exists in the real
world
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Design Process Principles - 2
The design should exhibit uniformity and
integration
The design should be assessed for quality
as it is being created, not after the fact
The design should be reviewed to
minimize conceptual (semantic) errors
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When Applying them
Plan for change, because it is inevitable
Plan for failure, because no nontrivial
software system is free of defects
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How do we know if the design we have
developed is of high quality?
Now let’s discuss three guidelines for
evaluating software design process
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Design Process Evaluation Guide #
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The design must implement all of the
explicit requirements contained in the
analysis model, and it must accommodate
all of the implicit requirements desired by
the customer
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Design Process Evaluation Guide #
2
The design must be readable and
understandable guide for those who
generate code, write test cases, and test
the software
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Design Process Evaluation Guide #
3
The design should provide a complete
picture of the software, addressing the
data, functional, and behavioral domains
from an implementation perspective
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Design Model/Representation
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Design Model Principles - 1
Separation of concerns
Modeling real-world objects
Minimizing the interactions among
cohesive design components
The design should be traceable to the
analysis model
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Design Model Principles - 2
The design should be structured to
accommodate change
The design should be structured to
degrade gently, even when aberrant data,
events, or operating conditions are
encountered
Design is not coding, coding is not design
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Let’s look at some design model
guidelines, before we discuss the design
quality attributes
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Guidelines for Good Design Model - 1
A design should exhibit an architectural
structure that
Has been created using recognizable design
patterns
Is composed of components that exhibit good
design characteristics
Can be implemented in an evolutionary
fashion, facilitating implementation and testing
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Guidelines for Good Design Model - 2
A design should be modular; that is
software should be logically partitioned
into elements that perform specific
functions and sub-functions
The design should contain distinct
representations of data, architecture,
interfaces, and components (modules)
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Guidelines for Good Design Model - 3
A design should lead to data structures
that are appropriate for the objects to be
implemented and are drawn from
recognizable data patterns
A design should lead to components that
exhibit independent functional
characteristics
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Guidelines for Good Design Model - 4
A design should lead to interfaces that
reduce the complexity of connections
between modules and with external
environment
A design should be derived using a
repeatable method that is driven by
information obtained during software
requirements analysis
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The guidelines we have just discussed
help designers enormously in developing
high quality software designs
Designers apply these guidelines with the
help of fundamental design concepts,
which improve the internal and external
quality of software design
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Questions Answered by Design
Concepts
What criteria can be used to partition
software into individual components?
How is function or data structure detail
separated from a conceptual
representation of software?
What uniform criteria define the technical
quality of a software design?
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Quality Design Concepts
The beginning of wisdom for a software engineer
is to recognize the difference between getting a
program to work, and getting it right
M. A. Jackson
These design concepts provide the necessary
framework for “getting it right” or to produce
highest possible software designs
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Abstraction
Abstraction permits one to concentrate on a
problem at some level of generalization
without regard to irrelevant low-level details
Abstraction is one of the fundamental ways
that we as humans cope with complexity
Grady Booch
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Levels of Abstraction - 1
At the highest level of abstraction, a solution
is stated in broad terms using the language
of the problem environment
At lower levels of abstraction, a more
procedural orientation is taken. Problem-
oriented terminology is coupled with
implementation-oriented terminology in an
effort to state a solution
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Levels of Abstraction - 2
At the lowest level of abstraction, the
solution is stated in a manner that can be
directly implemented
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Types of Abstraction - 1
Procedural abstraction
Named sequence of instructions that has a
specific and limited function
Example: Open door
Data abstraction
Named collection of data that describes a data
object
Example: any object (ADT)
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Types of Abstraction - 2
Control abstraction
Implies a program control mechanism without
specifying internal details
Example: synchronization semaphore
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Refinement - 1
A program is developed by successively
refining levels of procedural detail
A hierarchy is developed decomposing a
macroscopic statement of function in a
step-wise fashion until programming
language statements are reached
Refinement is actually a process of
elaboration
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Refinement - 2
There is a tendency to move immediately
to full detail, skipping the refinement steps.
This leads to errors and omissions and
makes the design much mode difficult to
review. Perform stepwise refinement
Abstraction and refinement are
complementary concepts
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Modularity - 1
One of the oldest concepts in software
design
Software is divided into separately named
and addressable components, often
called, modules, that are integrated to
satisfy problem requirements
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Modularity - 2
Modularity is the single attribute of
software that allows a program to be
intellectually manageable
Don’t over modularize. The simplicity of
each module will be overshadowed by the
complexity of integration
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Summary
We discussed design process and design
model principles, and discussed the some
quality attributes for producing high quality
design
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References
Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s
Approach by Roger Pressman (Chapter
13)
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