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Improving Design Decomposition

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Dependable Software Engineering: Theories, Tools, and Applications (SETTA 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9409))

Abstract

Decomposing a system into subsystems is essential to the design of large software systems. Traditionally, it is performed intuitively without rigorously analyzing the system model. This makes it difficult to check the decomposition correctness, and risks creating subsystems that are either too tightly coupled or not cohesive enough. An aggravating factor is that traditionally classes are the atomic design units. In many cases, however, the same classes play a role in more than one subsystem, and partitioning them unbroken among the subsystems may increase coupling and reduce cohesion. We present an analytical approach that enables reasoning about early exploration of decomposition alternatives. In addition, we describe a visual notation for diagramming the composition of subsystems, and an automatic technique for suggesting good decompositions. A key to our approach is that individual relations, not classes, are the atomic design units. We illustrate the approach with examples and demonstrate its effectiveness on a commercial system.

This work has been partially supported by GIF (grant No. 1131-9.6/2011).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Afeka Tel-Aviv Academic College of Engineering, Tel Aviv, Israel

    David Faitelson

  2. The Academic College Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Shmuel Tyszberowicz

Authors
  1. David Faitelson
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  2. Shmuel Tyszberowicz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Faitelson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

    Xuandong Li

  2. Birmingham City University, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Zhiming Liu

  3. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Wang Yi

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Faitelson, D., Tyszberowicz, S. (2015). Improving Design Decomposition. In: Li, X., Liu, Z., Yi, W. (eds) Dependable Software Engineering: Theories, Tools, and Applications. SETTA 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9409. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25942-0_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25942-0_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25941-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25942-0

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