Lecture 7
LOW-LEVEL DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
PB007 Software Engineering I
Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University
Fall 2018
1© Barbora Bühnová
2
Outline
Low-level design
Implementation issues
UML Interaction diagrams
B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007 2
Low-level Design
Lecture 7/Part 1
3B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007
Low-level design
Purpose:
 Include all code-level details into the model
 Decide how exactly the system shall be implemented
 Typically an implicit part of implementation
 Techniques
▪ Design patterns
▪ SOLID principles
▪ Guidelines for dependable/testable/.. programming
Chapter 7 Design and implementation 4
Design patterns
 A design pattern is a way of reusing abstract knowledge
about a problem and its solution in object-oriented world.
▪ Pattern descriptions make use of object-oriented characteristics
such as inheritance, polymorphism and interface realization.
 A pattern is a description of the problem and the essence
of its solution.
▪ Not a concrete design but a template for a design solution that
can be instantiated in different ways.
 It should be sufficiently abstract to be reusable in
different settings.
5Chapter 7 Design and implementation
The “Gang of Four” design patterns
 Introduced in a book by GoF in 1995
 Collection of 23 classic software design
patterns divided into three groups:
▪ Creational
▪ Structural
▪ Behavioral
 Observer pattern
▪ Behavioral pattern
▪ Separates the display of object
state from the object itself when
multiple displays of state are
needed.
6Chapter 7 Design and implementation
A UML model of the Observer pattern
7Chapter 7 Design and implementation
Design problems
 Be aware that any design problem you are facing may
have an associated pattern that can be applied.
▪ Tell several objects that the state of some other object has
changed (Observer pattern).
▪ Tidy up the interfaces to a number of related objects that have
often been developed incrementally (Façade pattern).
▪ Allow classes with incompatible interfaces to work together by
wrapping a new interface around that of an already existing class
(Adapter pattern).
▪ Reduce the cost of creating and manipulating a large number of
similar objects (Flyweight pattern).
▪ Restrict object creation for a class to only one instance
(Singleton pattern).
8Chapter 7 Design and implementation
SOLID principles
 The “first five principles” identified by Robert C. Martin in
the early 2000s that stand for five basic principles of
object-oriented programming and design.
 Single responsibility
 Open/closed
 Liskov substitution
 Interface segregation
 Dependency inversion
B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007 9
Single responsibility principle
 The principle states that every class should have a
single responsibility, and that responsibility should be
entirely encapsulated by the class.
 A responsibility can be understood as a reason to
change, so a class or module should have one, and only
one, reason to change.
 As an example, consider a module that compiles and
prints a report. Such a module can be changed for two
reasons – because the content or the format changes.
▪ If there is a change to the report compilation process, there is
greater danger that the printing code breaks.
B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007 10
Open/closed principle
 The principle states that software entities (classes,
modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension,
but closed for modification.
 Use inheritance and interfaces to avoid code changes
when extending system functionality.
B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007 11
Component
Specialization1 Specialization2
Interface
Implementation1 Implementation2
Liskov substitution principle
 The principle states that, in a computer program, if S is a
subtype of T, then objects of type T may be replaced
with objects of type S without altering any of the
desirable properties of that program (correctness, task
performed, etc.).
B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007 12
Rectangle
Square
width and height can be
changed independently
width and height must not
be changed independently
T
S
Interface segregation principle
 The principle states that no client should be forced to
depend on methods it does not use.
 ISP splits large interfaces into smaller and more specific
“role” interfaces so that clients will only have to know
about the methods that are of interest to them.
 ISP is intended to keep a system decoupled and thus
easier to refactor, change, and redeploy.
B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007 13
iATM
iWithdraw
iChangePIN
iCheckBalance
Dependency inversion principle
 The principle refers to a specific form of decoupling
where conventional dependency relationships
established from high-level modules to low-level
modules are inverted. The principle states:
 A. High-level modules should not depend on low-level
modules. Both should depend on abstractions.
 B. Abstractions should not depend upon details. Details
should depend upon abstractions.
B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007 14
iPowerLight ElectricityLight Electricity
power plug
Clean code by Robert C. Martin
 A handbook of agile software craftsmanship
 Guidelines for:
▪ Meaningful names
▪ Functions
▪ Comments
▪ Formatting
▪ Objects and data structures
▪ Error handling
▪ Concurrency
▪ … and others
 Smells and heuristics
B. Bühnová, FI MU, PB007 15
Design for non-functional qualities
 Design patterns and programming principles help us to
implement specific functionality while maintaining high
code quality
▪ Respect of design patterns and principles improves system
maintainability
 What if also other non-functional qualities are of high
importance?
 Are there any “patterns” for dependability, performance,
testability, etc.?
16Chapter 7 Design and implementation
Programming guidelines for Dependability
1. Limit the visibility of information in a program
2. Check all inputs for validity
3. Provide a handler for all exceptions
4. Minimize the use of error-prone constructs
5. Provide restart capabilities
6. Check array bounds
7. Include timeouts when calling external components
8. Name all constants that represent real-world values
17Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering
Limit the visibility of information in a
program
 Program components should only be allowed access to
data that they need for their implementation.
 This means that accidental corruption of parts of the
program state by these components is impossible.
 You can control visibility by making data representation
private and only allowing access to the data through
predefined operations such as get() and set().
Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering 18
Check all inputs for validity
 Range checks
▪ Check that the input falls within a known range.
 Size checks
▪ Check that the input does not exceed some maximum size e.g.
40 characters for a name.
 Representation checks
▪ Check that the input does not include characters that should not
be part of its representation e.g. names do not include numerals.
 Reasonableness checks
▪ Use information about the input to check if it is reasonable rather
than an extreme value.
Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering 19
Provide a handler for all exceptions
 A program exception is an
error or unexpected event.
 Exception handling constructs
allow for such events to be
handled without the need for
continual status checking to
detect exceptions.
20Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering
Exception handling
 Exception handling is a mechanism that implements
some level of fault tolerance.
 Exception handling strategies delegate responsibility to:
▪ Caller. Signal to a calling component that an exception has
occurred and provide information about the type of exception.
▪ Callee. Carry out some alternative processing to the processing
where the exception occurred. This is only possible where the
exception handler has enough information to recover from the
problem that has arisen.
▪ Controller. Pass control to a run-time support system to handle
the exception.
Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering 21
Minimize the use of error-prone constructs
 Parallelism
▪ Can result in unforeseen interaction between processes.
 Recursion
▪ Errors in recursion can cause memory overflow.
 Aliasing
▪ Using more than 1 name to refer to the same state variable.
 Floating-point numbers
▪ Inherently imprecise, leading to invalid comparisons.
 Interrupts
▪ Interrupts can cause a critical operation to be terminated.
 Goto statements, pointers, dynamic memory allocation
22Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering
Provide restart capabilities
 For systems that involve long transactions or user
interactions, you should always provide a restart
capability that allows the system to restart after failure
without users having to redo everything that they have
done.
 Restart depends on the type of system
▪ Keep copies of forms so that users don’t have to fill them in
again if there is a problem
▪ Save state periodically and restart from the saved state
Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering 23
Check array bounds
 In some programming languages, such as C or C++, it is
possible to address a memory location outside of the
range allowed for in an array declaration.
 This leads to the well-known ‘buffer overflow’
vulnerability where attackers write executable code into
memory by deliberately writing beyond the top element
in an array.
 If your language does not include bound checking, you
should therefore always check that an array access is
within the bounds of the array.
Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering 24
Include timeouts when calling external
components
 In a distributed system, failure of a remote computer can
be ‘silent’ so that programs expecting a service from that
computer may never receive that service or any
indication that there has been a failure.
 To avoid this, you should always include timeouts on all
calls to external components.
 After a defined time period has elapsed without a
response, your system should then assume failure and
take whatever actions are required to recover from this.
Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering 25
Name all constants that represent real-world
values
 Always give constants that reflect real-world values
(such as tax rates) names rather than using their
numeric values and always refer to them by name
 You are less likely to make mistakes and type the wrong
value when you are using a name rather than a value.
 This means that when these ‘constants’ change (for
sure, they are not really constant), then you only have to
make the change in one place in your program.
Chapter 13 Dependability Engineering 26
Programming guidelines for Performance
 Reduce the resources required for processing individual
algorithms or computations.
▪ Increase computational efficiency.
▪ Reduce computational overhead.
 Reduce the number of processed computations.
▪ Cache results of repeated computations.
▪ Manage the frequency of event processing.
▪ Batch data for processing (e.g. within backup activities).
 Control the use of resources.
▪ Bound execution times and queue sizes, assign priorities.
▪ Schedule non-urgent resource usage to off-peak hours.
27
© Software Architecture in Practice
by L. Bass, P. Clements and R. Kazman
Implementation Issues
Lecture 7/Part 2
28Chapter 7 Design and implementation
Implementation issues
 Reuse
Software composition from existing components.
Integration of diverse systems.
 Configuration management
Keeping track of different versions, continuous integration&delivery.
 Variability of devices
Mobile devices, wearables, IoT. Multi-platform development.
 The right technology and tools
 Code size and complexity
 Cloud computing, big data
29Chapter 7 Design and implementation
Reuse levels
 The object level
▪ At this level, you directly reuse objects from a library rather than
writing the code yourself.
 The component level
▪ Components are collections of objects and object classes that
you reuse in application systems.
 The system level
▪ At this level, you reuse entire application systems.
 The abstraction level
▪ At this level, you don’t reuse software directly but use knowledge
of successful abstractions in the design of your software.
30Chapter 7 Design and implementation
Configuration management activities
 Version management, where support is provided to keep
track of the different versions of software components.
Version management systems include facilities to coordinate
development by several programmers.
 System integration, where support is provided to help
developers define what versions of components are used to
create each version of a system. This description is then used
to build a system automatically by compiling and linking the
required components.
 Problem tracking, where support is provided to allow users
to report bugs and other problems, and to allow all developers
to see who is working on these problems and when they are
fixed.
31Chapter 7 Design and implementation
Key points
 When developing software, you should always consider
the possibility of reusing existing software, either as
components, services or complete systems.
 Configuration management is the process of managing
changes to an evolving software system. It is essential
when a team of people are cooperating to develop
software.
 Beware of huge variability in devices, technology, tools
and get familiar with them at least on the general level to
know which to choose.
32Chapter 7 Design and implementation
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 33
Lecture 7/Part 3
Interaction Diagrams
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 34
Interaction diagrams
 Sequence diagrams
▪ Emphasize time-ordered sequence of message sends
▪ Show interactions arranged in a time sequence
▪ Are the richest and most expressive interaction diagram
▪ Do not show object relationships explicitly - these can be inferred from
message sends
 Communication diagrams
▪ Emphasize the structural relationships between objects
▪ Use communication diagrams to make object relationships explicit
 Timing diagrams
▪ Emphasize the real-time aspects of an interaction
 Interaction overview diagrams
▪ Show how complex behavior is realized by a set of simpler interactions
(discussed earlier together with Activity diagrams)
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 35
Sequence diagram syntax
 Interactions are captured via lifelines (participants in the interaction) and
messages (communications between lifelines)
 Activations indicate when a lifeline has focus of control - they are often omitted from
sequence diagrams
:Registrar
:RegistrationManager
uml:Course
addCourse( "UML" )
«create»
notes can form
a "script"
describing the
flow
lifeline
sd AddCourse
object creation message
synchronous
message
object is
created at
this point
message
return
activation
The Registrar selects
"add course".
The system creates
the new Course.
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 36
Lifelines
 A lifeline represents a single participant in an interaction
▪ Shows how a classifier instance may participate in the interaction
 Lifelines have:
▪ name - the name used to refer to the lifeline in the interaction
▪ selector - a boolean condition that selects a specific instance
▪ type - the classifier that the lifeline represents an instance of
 They must be uniquely identifiable within an interaction by name, type or both
 The lifeline has the same icon as the classifier that it represents
jimsAccount [ id = "1234" ] : Account
name selector type
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 37
Messages
 A message represents a communication between two lifelines
synchronous
message
asynchronous
send
message
return
arrow type
creation:A
type of
message
destruction
found
message
lost
message
calling an operation synchronously
the sender waits for the receiver to complete
calling an operation asynchronously, sending a signal
the sender does not wait for the receiver to complete
semantics
returning from a synchronous operation call
the receiver returns focus of control to the sender
the sender creates the target
the sender destroys the receiver
the message is sent from outside the scope of the interaction
the message fails to reach its destination
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 38
Deletion and self-delegation
 Self delegation is when a lifeline sends a message to itself
▪ Generates a nested activation
:Registrar
:RegistrationManager uml:Course
deleteCourse( "UML" )
sd DeleteCourse
object is
deleted at
this point
«destroy»
self delegation
findCourse( "UML" )
nested activation
RegistrationManager
addCourse()
findCourse()
deleteCourse()
Course
0..*
1
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 39
Combined fragments – opt and alt
 OPT semantics:
▪ single operand that
executes if the
condition is true
 ALT semantics:
▪ two or more operands
each protected by its
own condition
▪ an operand executes if
its condition is true
▪ use else to indicate the
operand that executes
if none of the
conditions are true
:A :B :C :D
opt [condition]
do this if condition is true
alt
do this if condition1 is true
[condition1]
[condition2]
do this if condition2 is true
[else]
do this if neither condition is true
sd example of opt and alt
IF .. THEN
SELECT .. CASE
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 40
Combined fragments – loop and break
 LOOP semantics:
▪ Loop min times, then loop (max – min)
times while condition is true
 LOOP syntax:
▪ A loop without min, max or condition is
an infinite loop
▪ condition can be
• Boolean expression
• Plain text expression provided it is clear!
 Break specifies what happens when the
loop is broken out of:
▪ The break fragment executes
▪ The rest of the loop after the break does
not execute
 The break fragment is outside the loop
and so should overlap it as shown
:A :B
loop min, max [condition]
do something
sd examples of loop
loop [condition]
do something
loop while guard
condition is true
break on breaking out do this
do something else
must be global
relative to loop
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 41
Loop idioms
type of loop semantics loop expression
infinite loop keep looping forever loop *
for i = 1 to n
{body}
repeat ( n ) times loop n
while( booleanExpression )
{body}
repeat while booleanExpression
is true
loop [ booleanExpression ]
repeat
{body}
while( booleanExpression )
execute once then repeat while
booleanExpression is true
loop 1, * [booleanExpression]
forEach object in collection
{body}
Execute the loop once for each
object in a collection
loop [for each object in collection]
forEach object in ObjectType
{body}
Execute the loop once for each
object of a particular type
loop [for each object in :ObjectType]
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 42
The rest of the operators
operator long name semantics
par parallel Both operands execute in parallel
seq weak
sequencing
The operands execute in parallel subject to the constraint that
event occurrences on the same lifeline from different operands must
happen in the same sequence as the operands
ref reference The combined fragment refers to another interaction
strict strict
sequencing
The operands execute in strict sequence
neg negative The combined fragment represents interactions that are invalid
critical critical region The interaction must execute atomically without interruption
ignore ignore Specifies that some messages are intentionally ignored in the
interaction
consider consider Lists the messages that are considered in the interaction (all others
are ignored)
assert assertion The operands of the combined fragments are the only valid
continuations of the interaction
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 43
addCourse( "UML" )
uml = Course("UML")
addCourse( "UML" )
Sequence diagrams in design
:Registrar
:RegistrationUI
uml:Course
sd AddCourse - design
:RegistrationManager :DBManager
save(uml)
 Could you draw a UML Class diagram corresponding to the
sequence diagram above?
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 44
 Communication diagrams emphasize the structural aspects of an
interaction - how lifelines connect together
▪ Compared to sequence diagrams they are semantically weaker
▪ Object diagrams are a special case of communication diagrams
2: addCourse( "MDA" )
:Registrar
:RegistrationManager
mda:Course
uml:Course
1: addCourse( "UML" ) 1.1: «create»
2.1: «create»
sd AddCourses
link
messagesequence number
lifeline
object creation
message
Communication diagram syntax
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 45
Iteration
 Iteration is shown by
using the iteration
specifier (*), and an
optional iteration clause
▪ There is no prescribed
UML syntax for iteration
clauses
▪ Use code or pseudo
code
 To show that messages
are sent in parallel use
the parallel iteration
specifier, *//
iteration clause
1: printCourses( )
:Registrar
:RegistrationManager
[i]:Course
1.1.1: print()
1.1 * [for i = 1 to n] : printCourse( i )
sd PrintCourses
iteration specifier
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 46
Branching
 Branching is modelled by prefixing the sequence number with a guard
condition
▪ There is no prescribed UML syntax for guard conditions
▪ In the example above, we use the variable found. This is true if both the
student and the course are found, otherwise it is false
:RegistrationManager
1: register ( "Jim", "UML" )
:Registrar
course:Course
1.3 [found] : register( student )
1.1: student = findStudent( "Jim" )
1.4 [!found] : error()
1.2: course = findCourse( "UML" )
sd register student for course
It’s hard
to show
branching
clearly!
found = (student != null) & (course != null)
guard condition
return value from message
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 47
{t <= 15} {t = 10}{t > 30}
{t <= 15} {t = 30}
Timing diagrams
 Emphasize the real-time
aspects of an interaction
 Used to model timing
constraints
 Lifelines, their states or
conditions are drawn
vertically, time horizontally
 It's important to state the
time units you use in the
timing diagram
sd IntruderThenFire
soundingFireAlarm
soundingIntruderAlarm
off
:Siren
0 10 20 30 40 50
state or
condition
lifeline
intruder
intruder
fire
time in minutes
event
timing ruler
duration constraint
60
resting
70 80 90 100
sd IntruderThenFire
sounding
Intruder
Alarm
:Siren
off resting
sounding
Intruder
Alarm
sounding
fire Alarm
state or condition
all times in minutes
compact
form
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 48
{t <= 0.016}
{t <= 0.016}
soundIntruderAlarm() soundIntruderAlarm()
soundFireAlarm()
Messages on timing diagrams
 You can show
messages between
lifelines on timing
diagrams
 Each lifeline has its
own partition
sd SirenBehavior
soundingIntruderAlarm
off
:Siren
{t <= 15}
triggered
notTriggered
:IntruderSensorMonitor
{t <= 15}{t = 30}
all times in minutes
resting
triggered
notTriggered
:FireSensorMonit
or
soundingFireAlarm
messages
© Clear View Training 2010 v2.6 49
Key points
 There are four types of interaction diagrams:
▪ Sequence diagrams – emphasize time-ordered sequence of
message sends
▪ Communication diagrams – emphasize the structural
relationships between lifelines
▪ Timing diagrams – emphasize the real-time aspects of an
interaction
▪ Interaction overview diagrams – show how complex behavior is
realized by a set of simpler interactions; presented together with
Activity diagrams