| Software Blueprint |
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PROPERTIES COMMON TO BLUEPRINTS Step-by-step procedure from blueprint to finished articleSoftware blueprinting processes advocate containing inspirational activity (problem solving) as much as possible to the early stages of a project in the same way that the construction blueprint captures the inspirational activity of the construction architect. Following the blueprinting phase only procedural activity (following prescribed steps) is required. This means that a software blueprint must be prescriptive and therefore exhibit the same formality as other prescriptive languages such as C++ or Java. Software blueprinting exponents claim that this provides the following advantages over enduring inspiration:
Focused on a single application aspectSoftware blueprints focus on one aspect to avoid becoming diluted by compromising choice of description medium and to ensure that all of the relevant logic is localized. Selection of optimal description mediumThe single aspect focus of a software blueprint means that the optimal description medium can be selected. For example, algorithmic code may be best represented using textual code whereas GUI appearance may be best represented using a form design. The motivation behind selecting an intuitive description medium (i.e. one that matches well with mental models and designs for a particular aspect) is to improve:
Localization of aspect logicThe localization of aspect logic promoted by the software blueprinting approach is intended to improve navigability and this is based on the assumption that the application programmer most commonly wishes to browse application aspects independently. OrthogonalizationSoftware blueprinting relies on realizing a clean separation between logically orthogonal aspects to facilitate the localization of related logic and use of optimal description media described above. EXAMPLES GUI form designThe GUI form design (see GUI Toolkit ) is widely adopted across the software industry and allows the programmer to specify a prescriptive description of the appearance of GUI widgets within a window. This description can be translated directly to the code that draws the GUI (because it is prescriptive). Machine translatable co-ordination languages (e.g. CDL)Languages such as the Concurrent Description Language (CDL) separate an application's macroscopic logic (communication, synchronization and arbitration) from complex multi-threaded and/or multi-process applications into a single contiguous visual representation. The prescriptive nature of this description means that it can be machine translated into an executable framework that may be tested for structural integrity (detection of race conditions, deadlocks etc.) before the microscopic logic is available. Class designersClass designers allow the specification of arbitrarily complex data structures in a convenient form and the prescriptive nature of this description allows generation of executable code to perform list management, format translation, endian swapping and so on. EXTERNAL LINKS
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