Software Engineering

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12.2 
Structural design considerations
a design solution. The following set of software design guidelines are provided as a 
suggested approach to establishing the structural design configuration:
1. 
Evaluate the top levels of the functional architecture as it is being formulated to 
distinguish the central elements of the software product structural configuration. 
This involves searching for common themes among the functional components 
from which abstract structural elements can be identified to provide an organi-
zational, supervisory, or monitoring construct. Since all software products per-
form a form of data processing, the challenge is to establish an abstract design 
configuration of top-level structural components that will be used to partition 
and apportion the product functionality. The organizational, supervisory, and 
monitoring constructs are addressed here to provide additional guidance in the 
establishment of the abstract software design configuration.
●
  An organizational-based design draws its configuration from the manner by 
which the operational or business process is performed. This can result in a 
process-oriented, task-oriented, or role-based design configuration.
●
  A supervisory-based design draws its configuration from the need to provide 
guidance concerning the interaction of the user/operator with the execution 
of software functionality. An example of this would be a word-processing or 
CAD/CAM/CAE
2
 application that provides a set of dropdown menus from 
which the product’s main functionality is accessed.
●
  A monitoring-based design draws its configuration from the need to observe 
the status of process-control systems and equipment items, and to take cor-
rective action when a deviation in system performance is recognized. The 
major structural components may be organized around the real-time process 
being controlled, the system or equipment items being monitored, or the 
types of failures that may occur and corrective actions to be taken by opera-
tors of the computer-based monitoring system.
2. 
As the functional architecture evolves, the abstract structural design configura-
tion can be extended to encompass the improved knowledge of the functionality 
associated with each structural component. This involves the identification of 
abstract subcomponents to organize the lower-level functions. This can be done 
in parallel with the functional analysis practice to account for the evolving 
understanding of the functional architecture. When the functional architecture 
is complete, the functional units must be grouped and allocated to structural 
units as the building blocks or parts from which the software product will be 
assembled. The structural units must be aligned with the abstract structural 
components to complete the initial structural design configuration. This is 
where the design effort applies both a top-down and bottom-up orientation with 
an objective of establishing a comprehensive structural configuration for the 
physical architecture.
2 
CAD/CAM/CAE are acronyms for computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, and 
computer-aided engineering, respectively.

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