Lecture 7 – Design and Implementation

Part 1

Lecture 7 Design and implementation 1

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

 Structured object-oriented design processes involve

developing a number of different system models.
 They require a lot of effort for development and
maintenance of these models and, for small systems,
this may not be cost-effective.
 However, for large systems developed by different
groups design models are an important communication
mechanism.

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Process stages

 There are a variety of different object-oriented design

processes that depend on the organization using the
process.
 Common activities in these processes include:
 Define the context and modes of use of the system;
 Design the system architecture;
 Identify the principal system objects;
 Develop design models;
 Specify object interfaces.
 Process illustrated here using a design for a wilderness
weather station.
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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

 Once interactions between the system and its

environment have been understood, you use this
information for designing the system architecture.
 You identify the major components that make up the
system and their interactions, and then may organize the
components using an architectural pattern such as a
layered or client-server model.
 The weather station is composed of independent
subsystems that communicate by broadcasting
messages on a common infrastructure.

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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

 Identifying object classes is often a difficult part of object

oriented design.
 There is no 'magic formula' for object identification. It
relies on the skill, experience
and domain knowledge of system designers.
 Object identification is an iterative process. You are
unlikely to get it right first time.

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Approaches to identification

 Use a grammatical approach based on a natural

language description of the system (used in Hood OOD
method).
 Base the identification on tangible things in the
application domain.
 Use a behavioural approach and identify objects based
on what participates in what behaviour.
 Use a scenario-based analysis. The objects, attributes
and methods in each scenario are identified.

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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

 Object class identification in the weather station system

may be based on the tangible hardware and data in the
system:
 Ground thermometer, Anemometer, Barometer
• Application domain objects that are ‘hardware’ objects related to the
instruments in the system.
 Weather station
• The basic interface of the weather station to its environment. It
therefore reflects the interactions identified in the use-case model.
 Weather data
• Encapsulates the summarized data from the instruments.

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Weather station object classes

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Design models

 Design models show the objects and object classes and

relationships between these entities.
 Static models describe the static structure of the system
in terms of object classes and relationships.
 Dynamic models describe the dynamic interactions
between objects.

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Examples of design models

 Subsystem models that show logical groupings of

objects into coherent subsystems.
 Sequence models that show the sequence of object
interactions.
 State machine models that show how individual objects
change their state in response to events.
 Other models include use-case models, aggregation
models, generalisation models, etc.

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Subsystem models

 Shows how the design is organised into logically related

groups of objects.
 In the UML, these are shown using packages - an
encapsulation construct. This is a logical model. The
actual organisation of objects in the system may be
different.

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Sequence models

 Sequence models show the sequence of object

interactions that take place
 Objects are arranged horizontally across the top;
 Time is represented vertically so models are read top to bottom;
 Interactions are represented by labelled arrows, Different styles
of arrow represent different types of interaction;
 A thin rectangle in an object lifeline represents the time when the
object is the controlling object in the system.

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Sequence diagram describing data collection

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State diagrams

 State diagrams are used to show how objects respond to

different service requests and the state transitions
triggered by these requests.
 State diagrams are useful high-level models of a system
or an object’s run-time behavior.
 You don’t usually need a state diagram for all of the
objects in the system. Many of the objects in a system
are relatively simple and a state model adds
unnecessary detail to the design.

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Weather station state diagram

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Interface specification

 Object interfaces have to be specified so that the objects

and other components can be designed in parallel.
 Designers should avoid designing the interface
representation but should hide this in the object itself.
 Objects may have several interfaces which are
viewpoints on the methods provided.
 The UML uses class diagrams for interface specification
but Java may also be used.

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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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Lecture 7 – Design and Implementation

Part 2

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Design patterns

 A design pattern is a way of reusing abstract knowledge

about a problem and its solution.
 A pattern is a description of the problem and the essence
of its solution.
 It should be sufficiently abstract to be reused in different
settings.
 Pattern descriptions usually make use of object-oriented
characteristics such as inheritance and polymorphism.

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Pattern elements

 Name
 A meaningful pattern identifier.
 Problem description.
 Solution description.
 Not a concrete design but a template for a design solution that
can be instantiated in different ways.
 Consequences
 The results and trade-offs of applying the pattern.

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The Observer pattern

 Name
 Observer.
 Description
 Separates the display of object state from the object itself.
 Problem description
 Used when multiple displays of state are needed.
 Solution description
 See slide with UML description.
 Consequences
 Optimisations to enhance display performance are impractical.

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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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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 Lecture 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
(www.fsf.org), 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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