UNIT III

SOFTWARE DESIGN

Software design – Design process – Design concepts – Coupling – Cohesion –

Functional independence – Design patterns – Model-view-controller – Publish-
subscribe – Adapter – Command – Strategy – Observer – Proxy – Facade –
Architectural styles – Layered - Client Server - Tiered - Pipe and filter- User
interface design-Case Study.

1. Software design:
The design phase of software development deals with transforming the customer requirements as
described in the SRS documents into a form implementable using a programming language. The
software design process can be divided into the following three levels or phases of design:
1. Interface Design
2. Architectural Design
3. Detailed Design
Elements of a System
1. Architecture: This is the conceptual model that defines the structure, behavior, and views of a
system. We can use flowcharts to represent and illustrate the architecture.
2. Modules: These are components that handle one specific task in a system. A combination of
the modules makes up the system.
3. Components: This provides a particular function or group of related functions. They are made
up of modules.
4. Interfaces: This is the shared boundary across which the components of a system exchange
information and relate.
5. Data: This is the management of the information and data flow.
The design phase of software development deals with transforming the customer requirements as
described in the SRS documents into a form implementable using a programming language. The
software design process can be divided into the following three levels or phases of design:
1. Interface Design
2. Architectural Design
3. Detailed Design
Elements of a System
1. Architecture: This is the conceptual model that defines the structure, behavior, and views of a
system. We can use flowcharts to represent and illustrate the architecture.
2. Modules: These are components that handle one specific task in a system. A combination of
the modules makes up the system.
3. Components: This provides a particular function or group of related functions. They are made
up of modules.
4. Interfaces: This is the shared boundary across which the components of a system exchange
information and relate.
5. Data: This is the management of the information and data flow.

Interface Design
Interface design is the specification of the interaction between a system and its environment. This
phase proceeds at a high level of abstraction with respect to the inner workings of the system i.e,
during interface design, the internal of the systems are completely ignored, and the system is
treated as a black box. Attention is focused on the dialogue between the target system and the
users, devices, and other systems with which it interacts. The design problem statement
produced during the problem analysis step should identify the people, other systems, and devices
which are collectively called agents.
Interface design should include the following details:
1. Precise description of events in the environment, or messages from agents to which the
system must respond.
2. Precise description of the events or messages that the system must produce.
3. Specification of the data, and the formats of the data coming into and going out of the system.
4. Specification of the ordering and timing relationships between incoming events or messages,
and outgoing events or outputs.
Architectural Design
Architectural design is the specification of the major components of a system, their
responsibilities, properties, interfaces, and the relationships and interactions between them. In
architectural design, the overall structure of the system is chosen, but the internal details of major
components are ignored. Issues in architectural design includes:
1. Gross decomposition of the systems into major components.
2. Allocation of functional responsibilities to components.
3. Component Interfaces.
4. Component scaling and performance properties, resource consumption properties, reliability
properties, and so forth.
5. Communication and interaction between components.
The architectural design adds important details ignored during the interface design. Design of the
internals of the major components is ignored until the last phase of the design.
Detailed Design
Design is the specification of the internal elements of all major system components, their
properties, relationships, processing, and often their algorithms and the data structures. The
detailed design may include:
1. Decomposition of major system components into program units.
2. Allocation of functional responsibilities to units.
3. User interfaces.
4. Unit states and state changes.
5. Data and control interaction between units.
6. Data packaging and implementation, including issues of scope and visibility of program
elements.
7. Algorithms and data structures.

2. Software Design Principles

Software design principles are concerned with providing means to handle the complexity of the design
process effectively. Effectively managing the complexity will not only reduce the effort needed for design
but can also reduce the scope of introducing errors during design.

Following are the principles of Software Design

Problem Partitioning
For small problem, we can handle the entire problem at once but for the significant problem, divide the
problems and conquer the problem it means to divide the problem into smaller pieces so that each piece
can be captured separately.

For software design, the goal is to divide the problem into manageable pieces.

Benefits of Problem Partitioning

1. Software is easy to understand
2. Software becomes simple
3. Software is easy to test
4. Software is easy to modify
5. Software is easy to maintain
6. Software is easy to expand

Abstraction
An abstraction is a tool that enables a designer to consider a component at an abstract level without
bothering about the internal details of the implementation. Abstraction can be used for existing element as
well as the component being designed.
Here, there are two common abstraction mechanisms

1. Functional Abstraction
2. Data Abstraction

Functional Abstraction
i. A module is specified by the method it performs.
ii. The details of the algorithm to accomplish the functions are not visible to the user of the function.

Functional abstraction forms the basis for Function oriented design approaches.

Data Abstraction

Details of the data elements are not visible to the users of data. Data Abstraction forms the basis for Object
Oriented design approaches.

Modularity
Modularity specifies to the division of software into separate modules which are differently named and
addressed and are integrated later on in to obtain the completely functional software. It is the only property
that allows a program to be intellectually manageable. Single large programs are difficult to understand and
read due to a large number of reference variables, control paths, global variables, etc.

o ach module is a well-defined system that can be used with other applications.
o Each module has single specified objectives.
o Modules can be separately compiled and saved in the library.
o Modules should be easier to use than to build.
o Modules are simpler from outside than inside.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Modularity

In this topic, we will discuss various advantage and disadvantage of Modularity.

Advantages of Modularity

There are several advantages of Modularity

o It allows large programs to be written by several or different people

o It encourages the creation of commonly used routines to be placed in the library and used by other programs.
o It simplifies the overlay procedure of loading a large program into main storage.
o It provides more checkpoints to measure progress.
o It provides a framework for complete testing, more accessible to test
o It produced the well designed and more readable program.

Disadvantages of Modularity

There are several disadvantages of Modularity

o Execution time maybe, but not certainly, longer

o Storage size perhaps, but is not certainly, increased
o Compilation and loading time may be longer
o Inter-module communication problems may be increased
o More linkage required, run-time may be longer, more source lines must be written, and more documentation
has to be done
 3. Design concepts

The set of fundamental software design concepts are as follows:

1. Abstraction
• A solution is stated in large terms using the language of the problem environment at the highest
level abstraction.
• The lower level of abstraction provides a more detail description of the solution.
• A sequence of instruction that contain a specific and limited function refers in a procedural
abstraction.
• A collection of data that describes a data object is a data abstraction.
2. Architecture
• The complete structure of the software is known as software architecture.
• Structure provides conceptual integrity for a system in a number of ways.
• The architecture is the structure of program modules where they interact with each other in a
specialized way.
• The components use the structure of data.
• The aim of the software design is to obtain an architectural framework of a system.
• The more detailed design activities are conducted from the framework.
3. Patterns
A design pattern describes a design structure and that structure solves a particular design
problem in a specified content.

4. Modularity
• A software is separately divided into name and addressable components. Sometime they are
called as modules which integrate to satisfy the problem requirements.
• Modularity is the single attribute of a software that permits a program to be managed easily.
5. Information hiding
Modules must be specified and designed so that the information like algorithm and data presented
in a module is not accessible for other modules not requiring that information.

6. Functional independence
• The functional independence is the concept of separation and related to the concept of
modularity, abstraction and information hiding.
• The functional independence is accessed using two criteria i.e Cohesion and coupling.
Cohesion
• Cohesion is an extension of the information hiding concept.
• A cohesive module performs a single task and it requires a small interaction with the other
components in other parts of the program.
Coupling
Coupling is an indication of interconnection between modules in a structure of software.

7. Refinement
• Refinement is a top-down design approach.
• It is a process of elaboration.
• A program is established for refining levels of procedural details.
• A hierarchy is established by decomposing a statement of function in a stepwise manner till the
programming language statement are reached.
8. Refactoring
• It is a reorganization technique which simplifies the design of components without changing its
function behaviour.
• Refactoring is the process of changing the software system in a way that it does not change the
external behaviour of the code still improves its internal structure.
9. Design classes
• The model of software is defined as a set of design classes.
• Every class describes the elements of problem domain and that focus on features of the problem
which are user visible.
• OO design concept in Software Engineering
• Software design model elements