Software design

This article is about the activity between requirements and programming. For the broader meaning, see software development.

Software design is the process by which an agent creates a specification of a software artifact, intended to accomplish goals, using a set of primitive components and subject to constraints.^[1] Software design may refer to either "all the activities involved in conceptualizing, framing, implementing, commissioning, and ultimately modifying complex systems" or "the activity following requirements specification and before programming, as ... [in] a stylized software engineering process."^[2]

Software design usually involves problem solving and planning a software solution. This includes both low-level component and algorithm design and high-level, architecture design.

Overview

Software design is the process of implementing software solutions to one or more set of problems. One of the important parts of software design is the software requirements analysis (SRA). It is a part of the software development process that lists specifications used in software engineering. If the software is "semi-automated" or user centered, software design may involve user experience design yielding a story board to help determine those specifications. If the software is completely automated (meaning no user or user interface), a software design may be as simple as a flow chart or text describing a planned sequence of events. There are also semi-standard methods like Unified Modeling Language and Fundamental modeling concepts.Mwa ha ha ha In either case, some documentation of the plan is usually the product of the design. Furthermore, a software design may be platform-independent or platform-specific, depending on the availability of the technology used for the design.

Software design can be considered as creating a solution to a problem in hand with available capabilities. The main difference between Software analysis and design is that the output of a software analysis consist of smaller problems to solve. Also, the analysis should not be very different even if it is designed by different team members or groups. The design focuses on the capabilities, and there can be multiple designs for the same problem depending on the environment that solution will be hosted. They can be operations systems, webpages, mobile or even the new cloud computing paradigm. Sometimes the design depends on the environment that it was developed, whether if it is created from with reliable frameworks or implemented with suitable design patterns.

When designing software, two important factors to consider are its security and usability.

Software design topics

Design concepts

The design concepts provide the software designer with a foundation from which more sophisticated methods can be applied. A set of fundamental design concepts has evolved. They are:

Abstraction - Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose.
Refinement - It is the process of elaboration. A hierarchy is developed by decomposing a macroscopic statement of function in a step-wise fashion until programming language statements are reached. In each step, one or several instructions of a given program are decomposed into more detailed instructions. Abstraction and Refinement are complementary concepts.
Modularity - Software architecture is divided into components called modules.
Software Architecture - It refers to the overall structure of the software and the ways in which that structure provides conceptual integrity for a system. A good software architecture will yield a good return on investment with respect to the desired outcome of the project, e.g. in terms of performance, quality, schedule and cost.
Control Hierarchy - A program structure that represents the organization of a program component and implies a hierarchy of control.
Structural Partitioning - The program structure can be divided both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal partitions define separate branches of modular hierarchy for each major program function. Vertical partitioning suggests that control and work should be distributed top down in the program structure.
Data Structure - It is a representation of the logical relationship among individual elements of data.
Software Procedure - It focuses on the processing of each modules individually
Information Hiding - Modules should be specified and designed so that information contained within a module is inaccessible to other modules that have no need for such information

Design considerations

There are many aspects to consider in the design of a piece of software. The importance of each should reflect the goals the software is trying to achieve. Some of these aspects are:

Compatibility - The software is able to operate with other products that are designed for interoperability with another product. For example, a piece of software may be backward-compatible with an older version of itself.
Extensibility - New capabilities can be added to the software without major changes to the underlying architecture.
Fault-tolerance - The software is resistant to and able to recover from component failure.
Maintainability - A measure of how easily bug fixes or functional modifications can be accomplished. High maintainability can be the product of modularity and extensibility.
Modularity - the resulting software comprises well defined, independent components. That leads to better maintainability. The components could be then implemented and tested in isolation before being integrated to form a desired software system. This allows division of work in a software development project.
Reliability - The software is able to perform a required function under stated conditions for a specified period of time.
Reusability - the software is able to add further features and modification with slight or no modification.
Robustness - The software is able to operate under stress or tolerate unpredictable or invalid input. For example, it can be designed with a resilience to low memory conditions.
Security - The software is able to withstand hostile acts and influences.
Usability - The software user interface must be usable for its target user/audience. Default values for the parameters must be chosen so that they are a good choice for the majority of the users.
Performance - The software performs its tasks within a user-acceptable time. The software does not consume too much memory.
Scalability - The software adapts well to increasing data or number of users.

Modeling language

A modeling language is any artificial language that can be used to express information or knowledge or systems in a structure that is defined by a consistent set of rules. The rules are used for interpretation of the meaning of components in the structure. A modeling language can be graphical or textual. Examples of graphical modeling languages for software design are:

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is an example of a Process Modeling language.
EXPRESS and EXPRESS-G (ISO 10303-11) is an international standard general-purpose data modeling language.
Extended Enterprise Modeling Language (EEML) is commonly used for business process modeling across a number of layers.
Flowchart is a schematic representation of an algorithm or a step-wise process,
Fundamental Modeling Concepts (FMC) modeling language for software-intensive systems.
IDEF is a family of modeling languages, the most notable of which include IDEF0 for functional modeling, IDEF1X for information modeling, and IDEF5 for modeling ontologies.
Jackson Structured Programming (JSP) is a method for structured programming based on correspondences between data stream structure and program structure
LePUS3 is an object-oriented visual Design Description Language and a formal specification language that is suitable primarily for modelling large object-oriented (Java, C++, C#) programs and design patterns.
Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general modeling language to describe software both structurally and behaviorally. It has a graphical notation and allows for extension with a Profile (UML).
Alloy (specification language) is a general purpose specification language for expressing complex structural constraints and behavior in a software system. It provides a concise language based on first-order relational logic.
Systems Modeling Language (SysML) is a new general-purpose modeling language for systems engineering.

Design patterns

A software designer or architect may identify a design problem which has been solved by others before. A template or pattern describing a solution to a common problem is known as a design pattern. The reuse of such patterns can speed up the software development process, having been tested and proven in the past.

Usage

Software design documentation may be reviewed or presented to allow constraints, specifications and even requirements to be adjusted prior to computer programming. Redesign may occur after review of a programmed simulation or prototype. It is possible to design software in the process of programming, without a plan or requirement analysis,^[3] but for more complex projects this would not be considered a professional approach. A separate design prior to programming allows for multidisciplinary designers and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to collaborate with highly skilled programmers for software that is both useful and technically sound. Making of robots is also a huge use of software design

References

^ Ralph, P. and Wand, Y. (2009). A proposal for a formal definition of the design concept. In Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., and Robinson, W., editors, Design Requirements Workshop (LNBIP 14), pp. 103–136. Springer-Verlag, p. 109 doi:10.1007/978-3-540-92966-6_6.
^ Freeman, Peter (2004). "A Science of design for software-intensive systems". Communications of the ACM. 47 (8): 19–21 [20]. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
^ Ralph, P., and Wand, Y. A Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept. In, Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., and Robinson, W., (eds.), Design Requirements Engineering: A Ten-Year Perspective: Springer-Verlag, 2009, pp. 103-136

[1] Ralph, P. and Wand, Y. (2009). A proposal for a formal definition of the design concept. In Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., and Robinson, W., editors, Design Requirements Workshop (LNBIP 14), pp. 103–136. Springer-Verlag, p. 109 doi:10.1007/978-3-540-92966-6_6.

[2] Freeman, Peter (2004). "A Science of design for software-intensive systems". Communications of the ACM. 47 (8): 19–21 [20]. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

[3] Ralph, P., and Wand, Y. A Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept. In, Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., and Robinson, W., (eds.), Design Requirements Engineering: A Ten-Year Perspective: Springer-Verlag, 2009, pp. 103-136

[1]

[2]

[3]

v t e Computer science
Note: This template roughly follows the 2012 ACM Computing Classification System.
Hardware	Printed circuit board Peripheral Integrated circuit Very Large Scale Integration Systems on Chip (SoCs) Energy consumption (Green computing) Electronic design automation Hardware acceleration Processor Size / Form
Computer systems organization	Computer architecture Computational complexity Dependability Embedded system Real-time computing
Networks	Network architecture Network protocol Network components Network scheduler Network performance evaluation Network service
Software organization	Interpreter Middleware Virtual machine Operating system Software quality
Software notations and tools	Programming paradigm Programming language Compiler Domain-specific language Modeling language Software framework Integrated development environment Software configuration management Software library Software repository
Software development	Control variable Software development process Requirements analysis Software design Software construction Software deployment Software engineering Software maintenance Programming team Open-source model
Theory of computation	Model of computation Formal language Automata theory Computability theory Computational complexity theory Logic Semantics
Algorithms	Algorithm design Analysis of algorithms Algorithmic efficiency Randomized algorithm Computational geometry
Mathematics of computing	Discrete mathematics Probability Statistics Mathematical software Information theory Mathematical analysis Numerical analysis Theoretical computer science
Information systems	Database management system Information storage systems Enterprise information system Social information systems Geographic information system Decision support system Process control system Multimedia information system Data mining Digital library Computing platform Digital marketing World Wide Web Information retrieval
Security	Cryptography Formal methods Security hacker Security services Intrusion detection system Hardware security Network security Information security Application security
Human–computer interaction	Interaction design Social computing Ubiquitous computing Visualization Accessibility
Concurrency	Concurrent computing Parallel computing Distributed computing Multithreading Multiprocessing
Artificial intelligence	Natural language processing Knowledge representation and reasoning Computer vision Automated planning and scheduling Search methodology Control method Philosophy of artificial intelligence Distributed artificial intelligence
Machine learning	Supervised learning Unsupervised learning Reinforcement learning Multi-task learning Cross-validation
Graphics	Animation Rendering Photograph manipulation Graphics processing unit Mixed reality Virtual reality Image compression Solid modeling
Applied computing	Quantum Computing E-commerce Enterprise software Computational mathematics Computational physics Computational chemistry Computational biology Computational social science Computational engineering Differentiable computing Computational healthcare Digital art Electronic publishing Cyberwarfare Electronic voting Video games Word processing Operations research Educational technology Document management
Category Outline Glossaries