Software Design

Introduction
Design phase transforms SRS
document:
into a form easily implementable in
some programming language.

SRS Document Design Documents

Design Activities
Items Designed During
Design Phase
1. module structure,
2. control relationship among the modules
3. interface among different modules,
data items exchanged among different
modules,
4. data structures of individual modules,
5. algorithms for individual modules.
Module Structure
Introduction
A module consists of:
1. several functions
2. associated data structures.
D1 ..
D2 ..
D3 ..
Data
F1 .. Functions
F2 ..
F3 ..
F4 ..
F5 ..
Introduction
Design activities are usually classified into
two stages:
1. preliminary (or high-level) design
2. detailed design.
High-level design
Identify:
1. modules
2. control relationships among modules
3. interfaces among modules.

d1 d2

d3 d1 d4
High-level design

The outcome of high-level design:

program structure (or software
architecture).
Detailed design
For each module, design:
1. data structure
2. algorithms

Outcome of detailed design:

module specification.
What Is Good Software
Design?

Should implement all functionalities of

the system correctly.
Should be easily understandable.
Should be efficient.
Should be easily able to change,
i.e. easily maintainable.
What Is Good Software
Design?
Understandability of a design is a
major issue:
determines goodness of design:
a design that is easy to
understand: also easy to
maintain and change.
What Is Good Software
Design?

Unless a design is easy to understand,

tremendous effort needed to maintain it.

We already know that about 60% effort is

spent in maintenance.

If the software is not easy to understand:

maintenance effort would increase many
times.
Understandability

Use consistent and meaningful names

for various design components,

Design solution should consist of:

a cleanly decomposed set of modules (modularity),
Different modules should be neatly arranged in
a hierarchy:
in a neat tree-like diagram.
Modularity
Modularity is a fundamental attributes
of any good design.

Decomposition of a problem cleanly into

modules:
1. Modules are almost independent of
each other
2. divide and conquer principle.
Modularity
If modules are independent:
modules can be understood separately.
reduces the complexity greatly.

To understand why this is so,

remember that it is very difficult to break a

bunch of sticks but very easy to break the
sticks individually.
Example of Cleanly and
Non-cleanly Decomposed
Modules
Modularity

In technical terms, modules should

display:
1. high cohesion
2. low coupling.
Modularity
Neat arrangement of modules in a
hierarchy means:

1. low fan-out
Fan-out: a measure of the number of modules
directly controlled by given module.

2. abstraction-abstraction is a way to
describe system’s properties and
behavior in the most generic terms.
Cohesion and Coupling
Cohesion is a measure of:
functional strength of a module.

A cohesive module performs a single task or

function.

Coupling between two modules:

a measure of the degree of
interdependence or interaction between the
two modules.
Cohesion and Coupling

A module having high cohesion and

low coupling:

functionally independent of other

modules:

A functionally independent module has

minimal interaction with other modules.
Advantages of Functional
Independence

Better understandability and good design:

Complexity of design is reduced,

Different modules easily understood in
isolation:

 modules are independent

Advantages of Functional
Independence
Functional independence reduces error
propagation.
degree of interaction between modules is
low.

an error existing in one module does not

directly affect other modules.

Reuse of modules is possible.

Classification of
Cohesiveness
functional
sequential
communicational Degree of
procedural cohesion

temporal
logical
coincidental
Coincidental cohesion

The module performs a set of tasks:

which relate to each other very loosely, if at all.

 the module contains a random collection of functions.

 cohesion measures the strength of relationship between
pieces of functionality within a given module.

 It is unplanned and random cohesion, which might be the

result of breaking the program into smaller modules for
the sake of modularization. Because it is unplanned, it
may serve confusion to the programmers and is generally
not-accepted.
Logical cohesion

All elements of the module perform

similar operations:
e.g. error handling, data input, data
output, etc.

When logically categorized elements are

put together into a module, it is called
logical cohesion.
Temporal cohesion

The module contains tasks that are related

by the fact that all the tasks must be
executed in the same time span.

When elements of module are organized such

that they are processed at a similar point in
time, it is called temporal cohesion.
Procedural cohesion

If the set of functions of the module all part of a

procedure (algorithm) in which certain sequence of steps
have to be carried out in a certain order for achieving an
objective,
e.g. the algorithm for decoding a message.

When elements of module are grouped together,

which are executed sequentially in order to perform
a task, it is called procedural cohesion.
Communicational
cohesion
If All functions of the module Refer to the same
data structure,
Example:
the set of functions defined on an array or a stack.
When elements of module are grouped
together, which are executed
sequentially and work on same data
(information), it is called
communicational cohesion.
Sequential cohesion

If the Elements of a module forms different parts of

a sequence, output from one element of the
sequence is input to the next.
Example:

sort

search

display
 When elements of module are grouped
because the output of one element serves
as input to another and so on, it is called
sequential cohesion.
Functional cohesion

If the Different elements of a module

cooperate to achieve a single function.
 It is considered to be the highest degree
of cohesion, and it is highly expected.
Elements of module in functional
cohesion are grouped because they all
contribute to a single well-defined
function. It can also be reused.
Coupling
Coupling indicates:
how closely two modules interact
or how interdependent they are.

The degree of coupling between

two modules depends on their
interface complexity.
Classes of coupling

data
stamp
control Degree of
coupling
common
content
Data coupling
Two modules are data coupled,
if they communicate by an
elementary data item that is
passed as a parameter between
the two, eg an integer, a floa,
character etc.
Stamp coupling
Two modules are stamp coupled,

if they communicate via a

composite data item: (Data
Structure) eg: linked list
such as a record in PASCAL
or a structure in C.
Control coupling
It exists between two modules.

If Data from one module is used to

direct order of instruction execution in
another.

Example of control coupling:

a flag set in one module and tested in
another module.
Common Coupling

Two modules are common

coupled, if they share some
global data items.
Content coupling
Content coupling exists between two
modules:
if they share code,

e.g, branching from one module into

another module.

The degree of coupling increases

from data coupling to content coupling.
 Content coupling - When a module can directly access or modify
or refer to the content of another module, it is called content level
coupling.
 Common coupling- When multiple modules have read and write
access to some global data, it is called common or global coupling.
 Control coupling- Two modules are called control-coupled if one
of them decides the function of the other module or changes its flow
of execution.
 Stamp coupling- When multiple modules share common data
structure and work on different part of it, it is called stamp coupling.
 Data coupling- Data coupling is when two modules interact with
each other by means of passing data (as parameter). If a module
passes data structure as parameter, then the receiving module
should use all its components.
Neat Hierarchy

Control hierarchy represents organization of

modules. control hierarchy is also called
program structure.
Characteristics of
Module Structure

Depth:
number of levels of control
Width:
overall span of control.
Fan-out:
a measure of the number of modules
directly controlled by given module.
Characteristics of
Module Structure

Fan-in:
indicates how many modules
directly invoke a given module.
High fan-in represents code reuse
and is in general encouraged.
Module Structure
Fan out=2

Fan out=1

Fan in=2
Fan out=0
Goodness of Design

A design having modules:

with high fan-out numbers is not a
good design:
a module having high fan-out lacks
cohesion.
Visibility and Layering

A module A is said to be visible by

another module B,

if A directly or indirectly calls B.

The layering principle requires

modules at a layer can call only the
modules immediately below it.
Bad Design
Abstraction
The principle of abstraction
requires:
lower-level modules do not invoke
functions of higher level modules.

Also known as layered design.

High-level Design

High-level design maps functions into

modules {fi} {mj} such that:
1. Each module has high cohesion

2. Coupling among modules is as low as

possible

3. Modules are organized in a neat

hierarchy
Design Approaches

Two fundamentally different

software design approaches:

Function-oriented design
Object-oriented design
Function-Oriented
Design
A system is looked upon as something
that performs a set of functions.
Starting at this high-level view of the
system:
each function is successively refined into
more detailed functions.

Functions are mapped to a module

structure.
Function-Oriented
Design

Each subfunction:

split into more detailed subfunctions

and so on.
Object-Oriented Design

System is viewed as a collection

of objects (i.e. entities).

each object manages its own state

information.
Object-Oriented Design
Example
Library Automation Software:
each library member is a
separate object with its own
data and functions.

Functions defined for one

object:
cannot directly refer to or change
data of other objects.
Object-Oriented Design

Objects have their own internal data:

defines their state.
Similar objects constitute a class.
each object is a member of some
class.
Classes may inherit features from
a super class.
Conceptually, objects communicate
by message passing.
Object-Oriented versus
Function-Oriented Design

Unlike function-oriented design,

in OOD the basic abstraction is not
functions such as “sort”,
“display”, “track”, etc.,

but real-world entities such as

“employee”, “picture”, “machine”,
“radar system”, etc.
Object-Oriented versus
Function-Oriented Design

In OOD:
software is not developed by
designing functions such as:
1. update-employee-record,
2. get-employee-address, etc.

but by designing objects such as:

1. employees,
2. departments, etc.
Summary
We characterized the features of a
good software design by
introducing the concepts of:
fan-in, fan-out,
cohesion, coupling,
abstraction, etc.
Summary

Two fundamentally different

approaches to software design:
function-oriented approach
object-oriented approach