Software Design
Software design is a mechanism to transform user requirements into some suitable form,
which helps the programmer in software coding and implementation. It deals with
representing the client's requirement, as described in SRS (Software Requirement
Specification) document, into a form, i.e., easily implementable using programming language.
The software design phase is the first step in SDLC (Software Design Life Cycle), which moves
the concentration from the problem domain to the solution domain. In software design, we
consider the system to be a set of components or modules with clearly defined behaviors &
boundaries.
Objectives of Software Design
Following are the purposes of Software design:
1. Correctness: Software design should be correct as per requirement.
2. Completeness: The design should have all components like data structures, modules,
and external interfaces, etc.
3. Efficiency: Resources should be used efficiently by the program.
4. Flexibility: Able to modify on changing needs.
5. Consistency: There should not be any inconsistency in the design.
6. Maintainability: The design should be so simple so that it can be easily maintainable
by other designers.
Software Design Process – Software Engineering
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
Detailed 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.
Software Design Process
