Chapter 7 – Design and Implementation

Lecture 1

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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 using UML

 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:
 Understand and define the context and the external interactions with
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. Objects and
attributes are nouns; operations or services are verbs.
 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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