SOFTWARE DESIGN (SWD392)

CH04 – SOFTWARE DESIGN AND

ARCHITECTURE CONCEPTS
 Main Contents
• Object Oriented Concepts
• Concurrent Processing
• Design Patterns
• Software Architecture & Components
• Software Quality Attributes

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 Object Oriented Concepts
Objects & Classes 1/2
An object is a real-world physical or conceptual entity that provides an
understanding of the real world and, hence, forms the basis for a software
solution
• A real-world object can have physical properties (they can be seen or
touched): door, motor, lamp,..
• A conceptual object is a more abstract concept: an account, a transaction,..
An object (object instance) is a single “thing”: John’s car or Mary’s account
A class (object class) is a collection of objects with the same characteristics:
Account, Employee, Car, or Customer
Object-oriented applications consist of objects.

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 Object Oriented Concepts
Objects & Classes 2/2
• An object groups both data & procedures that operate on the data
– The procedures are usually called operations or methods.
– Some approaches, including the UML notation, refer to the operation as the
specification of a function performed by an object and the method as the
implementation of the function
• An attribute is a data value held by an object in a class. Each object
has a specific value of an attribute.
• An operation is the specification of a function performed by an object
– An object has one or more operations.
– The operations manipulate the values of the attributes maintained by the object.
– Operations may have input and output parameters.
– All objects in the same class have the same operations.

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 Object Oriented Concepts
Information Hiding 1/2

Information hiding is used in designing the object: decide what

information should be visible, what should be hidden
• Hidden parts of an object need not be visible to other objects
• If the internals of the object change -> affect this object only

Encapsulation: the potential change to the hidden information

that could potentially change is encapsulated inside an object
• Other objects may only indirectly access the encapsulated data
structure by calling the operations of the object.
• The specification of the operations (i.e., the name and the params
of the operations) is called the interface of the object.

If the data structure changes, the only object affected is the one
containing the data structure, not the calling object. This form
of information hiding is called data abstraction.
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 Object Oriented Concepts
Information Hiding 2/2

The above is Stack

class with a set of
operations is defined
to manipulate the
data structure (array
or linked list)
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 Object Oriented Concepts
Inheritance & Generalization/Specialization

• A mechanism for sharing and reusing code between classes

• A child class inherits the properties (encapsulated data and
operations) of a parent class
– Super class or Base class
– Subclass or derived class
– Specialization: parent -> child
– Generalization: child -> parent

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 Concurrent Processing
Sequential Application

A sequential application is a sequential program

that consists of passive objects and has only one
thread of control.
• When an object invokes an operation in
another object, control is passed from the
calling operation to the called operation.
• When the called operation finishes executing,
control is passed back to the calling operation.
• In a sequential application, only synchronous
message communication (procedure call or
method invocation) is supported
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 Concurrent Processing
Concurrent Application 1/2

In a concurrent application, there are typically

several concurrent objects, each with its own
thread of control.
• A concurrent source object can send an
asynchronous message to a concurrent
destination object and then continue executing,
regardless of when the destination object receives
the message.
• If the destination object is busy when the message
arrives, the message is buffered for the object.

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 Concurrent Processing
Concurrent Application 2/2

In a concurrent application, there are typically

several concurrent objects, each with its own
thread of control.
• Concurrent source object can send asynchronous
message(s) to a concurrent destination object and
then continue executing, regardless of when the
destination object receives the message.
• If the destination object is busy when the message
arrives, the message is buffered for the object.

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 Concurrent Processing
Concurrent Objects

Also referred to as active objects, concurrent processes,

concurrent tasks, or threads
• They have their own thread of control
• Execute independently of other objects.
• They are different from passive objects (invoked)
• No concurrency is allowed within a concurrent object

Concurrent objects often execute asynchronously and

are relatively independent of each other for significant
periods of time.

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 Concurrent Processing
Cooperation between Concurrent Objects

Common arise problems in concurrent processing

• The mutual exclusion problem occurs when
concurrent objects need to have exclusive access to
a resource, such as shared data or a physical device.
• The synchronization problem occurs when two
concurrent objects need to synchronize their
operations with each other.
• The producer/consumer problem occurs when
concurrent objects need to communicate with each
other in order to pass data from one concurrent
object to another (Inter Process Communication -
IPC)
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 Design Patterns
• Describes a recurring design problem to be solved, a solution to
the problem, and the context in which that solution works
(microarchitecture)
• The main kinds of reusable patterns are as follows:
– Design patterns: a small group of collaborating objects
– Architectural patterns: larger-grained (higher level) than design
patterns, structure of major subsystems of a system
– Analysis patterns: recurring patterns found in object-oriented
analysis and described them with static models, expressed in class
diagrams
– Product line–specific patterns: concentrating on a specific
application domain, provide more tailored domain-specific
solutions
– Idioms: low-level patterns that are specific to a given
programming language and describe implementation solutions to
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 Software Architecture & Components

A software architecture separates the overall structure of

the system, in terms of components and their
interconnections, from the internal details of the individual
components
• Components: the system modules that could be developed in
different ways depending on the particular platform the software
architecture.
• To fully specify a component, it is necessary to define it in terms
of the operations it provides and the operations it requires.
• Connectors:
– Join the components,
– Encapsulates the interconnection protocol between two or
more components: asynchronous (loosely coupled)
or synchronous (tightly coupled)
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 Software Quality Attributes
• Quality requirement of the software, often referred to as
nonfunctional requirements
– Security: system is resistant to security threats
– Modifiability: modified during or after initial development
– Reusability: software is capable of being reused
– Testability: capable of being tested
– Performance: performance goals (throughput, response times)
– Availability: capable of addressing, recovering from system failure
– Maintainability: capable of being changed after deployment
– Scalability: capable growing after its initial deployment
– Traceability: product of each phase can be traced back to products of
previous phases
• The quality attributes are addressed and evaluated at the time
the software architecture is developed, and can have a profound
effect on the quality of a software product
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