| Warren Simmons 2004-06-26, 3:55 pm |
| Your discussion brings to mind one application that caused a great deal
of trouble in design. The "application" was the administration of the
several Pension Plans. At the start, rules existed, but were different
in different cases. They could be over ruled as well. No two people
involved in the manual system could agree on what the system was
supposed to do. There was an seemingly endless list of options and
several had no documentation. I don't know the outcome of that
design, except to say an attempt was made to make the logic depend
upon a table of yes and no indicators. Also, the programmer,
thou retired, was hired back to update the program.
His assignment resulted in the first major review and update of the
plans in years.
Warren Simmons
Rick Smith wrote:
> Robert Wagner <robert.deletethis@wagner.net> wrote in message
> news:40dca602.29541137@news.optonline.net...
>
>
>
> Mr Wagner, this not confusing, at all. Here, McConnell is discussing
> *when* to use Structured Design, not what it is or how to use it.
>
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> override
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> Perhaps an example and explanation will clarify.
>
> In 1983 I was doing embedded programming for a firm that made
> data collection terminals. The president of the company decided
> we could sell more terminals if we also supplied software to
> process the data collected.
>
> Decisions were made -- people brought in -- a system was born.
>
> Over the next five years, the system underwent several changes.
> Users liked what the system did and wanted it to do more. That is,
> they wanted the system to do more than process the data collected.
> The functionality of the system changed.
>
> McConnell's interpretation of Constantine's article seems to be
> that structured design may be better for such evolving systems.
> Perhaps this is because such systems have no 'real world' to
> model or, maybe the expression of the functionality is needed
> before one can decide what the 'real world' ought to be.
> [This is reminiscent of Machiavelli's 'new order' and having
> 'actual experience of it'.]
>
> In other words, evolving functionality will determine what data is
> to be processed and preserved and this fits structured design.
> Evolving data (improved modeling) will determine what processes
> (behavior) are to be done and this fits object oriented design.
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