Chapter 7 – Design and Implementation
Lecture 7
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Topics covered
Object-oriented design using the UML
Design patterns
Implementation issues
Open source development
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Design and implementation
Software design and implementation is the stage in the
software engineering process at which an executable
software system is developed.
Software design and implementation activities are
invariably inter-leaved.
Software design is a creative activity in which you identify
software components and their relationships, based on a
customer’s requirements.
Implementation is the process of realizing the design as a
program.
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Build or buy
In a wide range of domains, it is now possible to buy off-
the-shelf systems (COTS) that can be adapted and
tailored to the users’ requirements.
For example, if you want to implement a medical records
system, you can buy a package that is already used in hospitals.
It can be cheaper and faster to use this approach rather than
developing a system in a conventional programming language.
When you develop an application in this way, the design
process becomes concerned with how to use the
configuration features of that system to deliver the
system requirements.
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An object-oriented design process
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Process stages
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System context and interactions
Understanding the relationships between the software
that is being designed and its external environment is
essential for deciding how to provide the required system
functionality and how to structure the system to
communicate with its environment.
Understanding of the context also lets you establish the
boundaries of the system. Setting the system boundaries
helps you decide what features are implemented in the
system being designed and what features are in other
associated systems.
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Context and interaction models
A system context model is a structural model that
demonstrates the other systems in the environment of
the system being developed.
An interaction model is a dynamic model that shows how
the system interacts with its environment as it is used.
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System context for the weather station
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Weather station use cases
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Use case description—Report weather
System Weather station
Use case Report weather
Actors Weather information system, Weather station
Description The weather station sends a summary of the weather data that has been
collected from the instruments in the collection period to the weather
information system. The data sent are the maximum, minimum, and average
ground and air temperatures; the maximum, minimum, and average air
pressures; the maximum, minimum, and average wind speeds; the total
rainfall; and the wind direction as sampled at five-minute intervals.
Stimulus The weather information system establishes a satellite communication link
with the weather station and requests transmission of the data.
Response The summarized data is sent to the weather information system.
Comments Weather stations are usually asked to report once per hour but this frequency
may differ from one station to another and may be modified in the future.
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Architectural design
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High-level architecture of the weather station
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Architecture of data collection system
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Object class identification
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Approaches to identification
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Weather station description
A weather station is a package of software controlled instruments
which collects data, performs some data processing and transmits
this data for further processing. The instruments include air and
ground thermometers, an anemometer, a wind vane, a barometer
and a rain gauge. Data is collected periodically.
When a command is issued to transmit the weather data, the
weather station processes and summarises the collected data.
The summarised data is transmitted to the mapping computer
when a request is received.
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Weather station object classes
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Weather station object classes
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Design models
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Examples of design models
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Subsystem models
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Sequence models
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Sequence diagram describing data collection
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State diagrams
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Weather station state diagram
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Interface specification
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Weather station interfaces
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Key points
Software design and implementation are inter-leaved activities. The
level of detail in the design depends on the type of system and
whether you are using a plan-driven or agile approach.
The process of object-oriented design includes activities to design
the system architecture, identify objects in the system, describe the
design using different object models and document the component
interfaces.
A range of different models may be produced during an object-
oriented design process. These include static models (class models,
generalization models, association models) and dynamic models
(sequence models, state machine models).
Component interfaces must be defined precisely so that other
objects can use them. A UML interface stereotype may be used to
define interfaces.
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Chapter 7 – Design and Implementation
Lecture 2
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Design patterns
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Pattern elements
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The Observer pattern
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The Observer pattern (1)
Pattern Observer
name
Description Separates the display of the state of an object from the object itself and
allows alternative displays to be provided. When the object state
changes, all displays are automatically notified and updated to reflect the
change.
Problem In many situations, you have to provide multiple displays of state
description information, such as a graphical display and a tabular display. Not all of
these may be known when the information is specified. All alternative
presentations should support interaction and, when the state is changed,
all displays must be updated.
This pattern may be used in all situations where more than one
display format for state information is required and where it is not
necessary for the object that maintains the state information to know
about the specific display formats used.
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The Observer pattern (2)
Pattern name Observer
Solution This involves two abstract objects, Subject and Observer, and two concrete
description objects, ConcreteSubject and ConcreteObject, which inherit the attributes of the
related abstract objects. The abstract objects include general operations that are
applicable in all situations. The state to be displayed is maintained in
ConcreteSubject, which inherits operations from Subject allowing it to add and
remove Observers (each observer corresponds to a display) and to issue a
notification when the state has changed.
The ConcreteObserver maintains a copy of the state of ConcreteSubject and
implements the Update() interface of Observer that allows these copies to be
kept in step. The ConcreteObserver automatically displays the state and reflects
changes whenever the state is updated.
Consequences The subject only knows the abstract Observer and does not know details of the
concrete class. Therefore there is minimal coupling between these objects.
Because of this lack of knowledge, optimizations that enhance display
performance are impractical. Changes to the subject may cause a set of linked
updates to observers to be generated, some of which may not be necessary.
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Multiple displays using the Observer pattern
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A UML model of the Observer pattern
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Design problems
To use patterns in your design, you need to recognize
that any design problem you are facing may have an
associated pattern that can be applied.
Tell several objects that the state of some other object has
changed (Observer pattern).
Tidy up the interfaces to a number of related objects that have
often been developed incrementally (Façade pattern).
Provide a standard way of accessing the elements in a
collection, irrespective of how that collection is implemented
(Iterator pattern).
Allow for the possibility of extending the functionality of an
existing class at run-time (Decorator pattern).
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Implementation issues
Focus here is not on programming, although this is
obviously important, but on other implementation issues
that are often not covered in programming texts:
Reuse Most modern software is constructed by reusing existing
components or systems. When you are developing software, you
should make as much use as possible of existing code.
Configuration management During the development process,
you have to keep track of the many different versions of each
software component in a configuration management system.
Host-target development Production software does not usually
execute on the same computer as the software development
environment. Rather, you develop it on one computer (the host
system) and execute it on a separate computer (the target
system).
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Reuse
From the 1960s to the 1990s, most new software was
developed from scratch, by writing all code in a high-
level programming language.
The only significant reuse or software was the reuse of functions
and objects in programming language libraries.
Costs and schedule pressure mean that this approach
became increasingly unviable, especially for commercial
and Internet-based systems.
An approach to development based around the reuse of
existing software emerged and is now generally used for
business and scientific software.
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Reuse levels
The abstraction level
At this level, you don’t reuse software directly but use knowledge
of successful abstractions in the design of your software.
The object level
At this level, you directly reuse objects from a library rather than
writing the code yourself.
The component level
Components are collections of objects and object classes that
you reuse in application systems.
The system level
At this level, you reuse entire application systems.
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Reuse costs
The costs of the time spent in looking for software to
reuse and assessing whether or not it meets your needs.
Where applicable, the costs of buying the reusable
software. For large off-the-shelf systems, these costs
can be very high.
The costs of adapting and configuring the reusable
software components or systems to reflect the
requirements of the system that you are developing.
The costs of integrating reusable software elements with
each other (if you are using software from different
sources) and with the new code that you have
developed.
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Software reuse
Reuse-based software engineering
Application system reuse
The whole of an application system may be reused either by
incorporating it without change into other systems (COTS reuse)
or by developing application families.
Component reuse
Components of an application from sub-systems to single objects
may be reused. Covered in Chapter 17.
Object and function reuse
Software components that implement a single well-defined object
or function may be reused.
Benefits of software reuse
Benefit Explanation
Increased dependability Reused software, which has been tried and tested in
working systems, should be more dependable than
new software. Its design and implementation faults
should have been found and fixed.
Reduced process risk The cost of existing software is already known,
whereas the costs of development are always a matter
of judgment. This is an important factor for project
management because it reduces the margin of error in
project cost estimation. This is particularly true when
relatively large software components such as
subsystems are reused.
Effective use of specialists Instead of doing the same work over and over again,
application specialists can develop reusable software
that encapsulates their knowledge.
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Benefits of software reuse
Benefit Explanation
Standards compliance Some standards, such as user interface standards, can
be implemented as a set of reusable components. For
example, if menus in a user interface are implemented
using reusable components, all applications present the
same menu formats to users. The use of standard user
interfaces improves dependability because users make
fewer mistakes when presented with a familiar interface.
Accelerated development Bringing a system to market as early as possible is often
more important than overall development costs. Reusing
software can speed up system production because both
development and validation time may be reduced.
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Problems with reuse
Problem Explanation
Increased maintenance If the source code of a reused software system or
costs component is not available then maintenance costs may be
higher because the reused elements of the system may
become increasingly incompatible with system changes.
Lack of tool support Some software tools do not support development with
reuse. It may be difficult or impossible to integrate these
tools with a component library system. The software
process assumed by these tools may not take reuse into
account. This is particularly true for tools that support
embedded systems engineering, less so for object-oriented
development tools.
Not-invented-here Some software engineers prefer to rewrite components
syndrome because they believe they can improve on them. This is
partly to do with trust and partly to do with the fact that
writing original software is seen as more challenging than
reusing other people’s software.
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Problems with reuse
Problem Explanation
Creating, maintaining, Populating a reusable component library and ensuring the
and using a component software developers can use this library can be expensive.
library Development processes have to be adapted to ensure that
the library is used.
Finding, understanding, Software components have to be discovered in a library,
and adapting reusable understood and, sometimes, adapted to work in a new
components environment. Engineers must be reasonably confident of
finding a component in the library before they include a
component search as part of their normal development
process.
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The reuse landscape
The reuse landscape
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Approaches that support software reuse
Approach Description
Architectural patterns Standard software architectures that support common types
of application systems are used as the basis of applications.
Described in Chapters 6, 13, and 20.
Design patterns Generic abstractions that occur across applications are
represented as design patterns showing abstract and
concrete objects and interactions. Described in Chapter 7.
Component-based Systems are developed by integrating components
development (collections of objects) that conform to component-model
standards. Described in Chapter 17.
Application frameworks Collections of abstract and concrete classes are adapted and
extended to create application systems.
Legacy system wrapping Legacy systems (see Chapter 9) are ‘wrapped’ by defining a
set of interfaces and providing access to these legacy
systems through these interfaces.
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Approaches that support software reuse
Approach Description
Service-oriented systems Systems are developed by linking shared services, which
may be externally provided. Described in Chapter 19.
Software product lines An application type is generalized around a common
architecture so that it can be adapted for different customers.
COTS product reuse Systems are developed by configuring and integrating
existing application systems.
ERP systems Large-scale systems that encapsulate generic business
functionality and rules are configured for an organization.
Configurable vertical Generic systems are designed so that they can be configured
applications to the needs of specific system customers.
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Approaches that support software reuse
Approach Description
Program libraries Class and function libraries that implement commonly used
abstractions are available for reuse.
Model-driven engineering Software is represented as domain models and
implementation independent models and code is generated
from these models. Described in Chapter 5.
Program generators A generator system embeds knowledge of a type of
application and is used to generate systems in that domain
from a user-supplied system model.
Aspect-oriented software Shared components are woven into an application at different
development places when the program is compiled. Described in Chapter
21.
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Reuse planning factors
Application frameworks
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Configuration management
Configuration management is the name given to the
general process of managing a changing software
system.
The aim of configuration management is to support the
system integration process so that all developers can
access the project code and documents in a controlled
way, find out what changes have been made, and
compile and link components to create a system.
See also Chapter 25.
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Configuration management activities
Version management, where support is provided to keep track
of the different versions of software components. Version
management systems include facilities to coordinate
development by several programmers.
System integration, where support is provided to help
developers define what versions of components are used to
create each version of a system. This description is then used
to build a system automatically by compiling and linking the
required components.
Problem tracking, where support is provided to allow users to
report bugs and other problems, and to allow all developers to
see who is working on these problems and when they are
fixed.
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Host-target development
Most software is developed on one computer (the host),
but runs on a separate machine (the target).
More generally, we can talk about a development
platform and an execution platform.
A platform is more than just hardware.
It includes the installed operating system plus other supporting
software such as a database management system or, for
development platforms, an interactive development environment.
Development platform usually has different installed
software than execution platform; these platforms may
have different architectures.
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Development platform tools
An integrated compiler and syntax-directed editing
system that allows you to create, edit and compile code.
A language debugging system.
Graphical editing tools, such as tools to edit UML
models.
Testing tools, such as Junit that can automatically run a
set of tests on a new version of a program.
Project support tools that help you organize the code for
different development projects.
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Integrated development environments (IDEs)
Software development tools are often grouped to create
an integrated development environment (IDE).
An IDE is a set of software tools that supports different
aspects of software development, within some common
framework and user interface.
IDEs are created to support development in a specific
programming language such as Java. The language IDE
may be developed specially, or may be an instantiation
of a general-purpose IDE, with specific language-support
tools.
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Component/system deployment factors
If a component is designed for a specific hardware architecture, or
relies on some other software system, it must obviously be deployed
on a platform that provides the required hardware and software
support.
High availability systems may require components to be deployed
on more than one platform. This means that, in the event of platform
failure, an alternative implementation of the component is available.
If there is a high level of communications traffic between
components, it usually makes sense to deploy them on the same
platform or on platforms that are physically close to one other. This
reduces the delay between the time a message is sent by one
component and received by another.
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Open source development
Open source development is an approach to software
development in which the source code of a software
system is published and volunteers are invited to
participate in the development process
Its roots are in the Free Software Foundation
([Link]), which advocates that source code should
not be proprietary but rather should always be available
for users to examine and modify as they wish.
Open source software extended this idea by using the
Internet to recruit a much larger population of volunteer
developers. Many of them are also users of the code.
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Open source systems
The best-known open source product is, of course, the
Linux operating system which is widely used as a server
system and, increasingly, as a desktop environment.
Other important open source products are Java, the
Apache web server and the mySQL database
management system.
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Open source issues
Should the product that is being developed make use of
open source components?
Should an open source approach be used for the
software’s development?
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Open source business
More and more product companies are using an open
source approach to development.
Their business model is not reliant on selling a software
product but on selling support for that product.
They believe that involving the open source community
will allow software to be developed more cheaply, more
quickly and will create a community of users for the
software.
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Open source licensing
A fundamental principle of open-source development is
that source code should be freely available, this does not
mean that anyone can do as they wish with that code.
Legally, the developer of the code (either a company or an
individual) still owns the code. They can place restrictions on
how it is used by including legally binding conditions in an open
source software license.
Some open source developers believe that if an open source
component is used to develop a new system, then that system
should also be open source.
Others are willing to allow their code to be used without this
restriction. The developed systems may be proprietary and sold
as closed source systems.
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License models
The GNU General Public License (GPL). This is a so-called
‘reciprocal’ license that means that if you use open source
software that is licensed under the GPL license, then you
must make that software open source.
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a variant
of the GPL license where you can write components that link
to open source code without having to publish the source of
these components.
The Berkley Standard Distribution (BSD) License. This is a
non-reciprocal license, which means you are not obliged to re-
publish any changes or modifications made to open source
code. You can include the code in proprietary systems that
are sold.
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License management
Establish a system for maintaining information about
open-source components that are downloaded and
used.
Be aware of the different types of licenses and
understand how a component is licensed before it is
used.
Be aware of evolution pathways for components.
Educate people about open source.
Have auditing systems in place.
Participate in the open source community.
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Key points
When developing software, you should always consider the
possibility of reusing existing software, either as components,
services or complete systems.
Configuration management is the process of managing changes to
an evolving software system. It is essential when a team of people
are cooperating to develop software.
Most software development is host-target development. You use an
IDE on a host machine to develop the software, which is transferred
to a target machine for execution.
Open source development involves making the source code of a
system publicly available. This means that many people can
propose changes and improvements to the software.
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