CSE 303 – Software Design and

Architecture
 Previous Lecture
• Design phase in SDLC – architecture and
detailed design
• Factors that affect design
• Quality Models
 Outline
• Good design
• Quality attributes of software design
• Software design principles
• Concepts in design
GOOD DESIGN
 Efficiency
• Efficiency refers to the responsiveness of
the system,
– i.e. the time required to respond to stimuli
(events),
– or the number of events processed in some
interval of time.
 Efficiency
• The time to process a sequence of events can be divided
into three parts.

• First, time is needed to communicate between different

software components that collaborate to process an event.

• Second, the computation times that components executed

may have overlaps or gaps between them.

• Third, the times are needed for each component to

complete its computation.
 Correctness
• Correctness is the property that software
implements the specified users’
requirements.

• It is impossible that a design at any level

that does not correctly implement the
specified requirements would lead to a
correct implementation.
 Reliability
• Reliability can be defined as the probability
that a system performs user required
functionality correctly
– at a specified environment in a given period of
time.
 Portability
• Portability is the property of a software
system that can be easily transported from
one hardware/software platform to
another,
– for example, from a PC/Windows environment
to a Sun/Unix environment or a Macintosh
environment.
 Maintainability
• Maintainability refers to the easiness of
maintaining a software system.

• There are two types of software maintenance

operations.
– corrective maintenance.
– adaptive maintenance.

• Well-structured design helps software

engineers to understand the system.
 Reusability

• Reusability is the property of a software

system that its components can be easily
reused in the development of other
software systems.

– Reusability depends on the generality of the

components in a given application domain
and the extent to which the components are
parameterised and configurable.
 Interoperability
• Interoperability is the property of how easy a
software system can be used with other
software systems.

• Interoperability mostly depends on the interface

between a software system and its environment.

• It requires that the implementation of the

software follow certain standard interface and
coding conventions.
QUALITY ATTRIBUTES OF
SOFTWARE DESIGN
 Quality Attributes – Design Objectives

• Modularity:
– The design should be composed of replaceable, self-
contained assemblies of elementary parts,
– thereby aiding both the initial development and the later
maintenance.

• Portability:
– The designed product should be able to be moved
unchanged
• from test environments to operational environments and
• from one operational environment to another.
 Quality Attributes – Design Objectives
• Flexibility or modifiability:
– The design should facilitate adaptation to changing end-user
requirements,
• changes based on new problems in the end users’ world

• Conceptual integrity:
– The design should exhibit harmony, symmetry and
predictability.

• Well structured:
– The design should be consistent with chosen design
principles, such as information hiding, to organise the
structure of the design.
 Quality Attributes – Design Objectives

• Simple:
– The design should be ‘as simple as possible, but no
simpler’.

• Efficient:
– The functions provided by the design should be
computable by using the available resources.

• Adequate:
– The design should meet the stated requirements.
 Quality Attributes – Design Objectives

• Flexible:
– The design should be able to accommodate likely changes
in the requirements, however these might arise.

• Implementable:
– The functions offered by the design should be theoretically
computable with the information available and achievable
using currently available software and hardware technology.

• Standardised:
– The design should be represented using standard or well
defined and familiar notation for any documentation.
 Quality Attributes – Design Objectives

• Feasibility:
– The designed process of bringing about the product should
be executable.

• Simplicity:
– The production (i.e. the development) of the designed
software should be as simple and straightforward as possible
without unnecessary complication.

• Reliability:
– The designed development process should with high
probability be successful rather than fail to achieve its goal.
SOFTWARE DESIGN PRINCIPLES
 Software Design Principles
• Always consider alternative approaches

• The design should be traceable to the analysis model

• The design should not reinvent the wheel

• The design should minimise intellectual distance

between the software and the problem as it exists in the
real world.
Software Design Principles contd…
• The design should exhibit uniformity and integration
– A design is uniform if it appears that one person developed
the whole thing.
– A design is integrated if care is taken in defining interfaces
between design components.

• The design should be reviewed to minimize conceptual

(semantic) errors
Software Design Principles contd…
• Design is not coding, coding is not design
– Even when detailed designs are created for program
components, the level of abstraction of the design model
is higher than source code.

• The design should be structured to accommodate

change

• The design should be assessed for quality as it is being

created
CONCEPTS IN DESIGN

23
 Concepts in Software Design Process
• Abstraction
– Concentrate on a problem at some level of generalization
without regard to irrelevant low level details.
• Modularity
– Divide the software into separately named and
addressable components, that are integrated to satisfy the
problem requirements.
• Refinement
– Top down design strategy that successively refines the
levels of procedural details.
– Every refinement step involves Design Decisions.
 Modular Design
• Easier to manage
• Easier to understand
• Reduces complexity
• Delegation / division of work
• Fault isolation
• Independent development
• Separation of concerns
• Reuse
 Effective Modular Design
• How to decompose a software system into
best set of modules?
– Information hiding
– Cohesion
– Coupling
– Functional independence
 Information Hiding
• Design the modules in such a way that information
(data & procedures) contained in one module is
inaccessible to other modules that have no need for
such information.

• Independent modules.
• Benefits:
– when modifications are required, it reduces the
chances of propagating to other modules.
 Cohesion
• “A module should ideally do one thing.”
• Each module performs a single task requiring little
interaction with other modules.
• A cohesive module since accomplished neatly
defined single task so it can be re-used in other
projects
• High cohesion is good
– Changes are likely to be local to a module
– Easier to understand a module in isolation
 Coupling

• A measure of interconnection among modules in a

software structure
• Depends on the interface complexity between the
modules
• High coupling causes problems
– Change propagation- ripple effect
– Difficulty in understanding
– Difficult reuse
 Functional Independence
• A module having high cohesion and low coupling is said to
be functionally independent of other modules.

• Each module addresses a specific sub function of

requirements and is easier to maintain or modify
• Benefits:
– Error isolation
– Scope of Re-use
– Understandability
 Summary
• Good design
• Quality attributes of software design
• Software design principles
• A few concepts in design