Program Design

Introduction

The application logic for a system will be expressed in programs that will be written during
construction of the new system. Program design is the part of the design phase of the SDLC
(Software Development Life Cycle) during which analysts determine what programs will be
written, create instructions for the programmers about how the code should be written, and identify
how the pieces of code will fit together to form a program.

1. Data Flow Diagram and Designing Program

1.1 Moving from Logical to Physical Process Model

Several things must be done to create the new system First, various implementation decisions will
be made about the new system, such as what programming language(s) will be used. The data flow
diagrams created during analysis are modified to show these implementation decisions, resulting in
a set of physical data flow diagram.

DFD (Data flow Diagram) is used to model how the system will be made, by using several symbols
which represent the system, external entities (human-machine boundaries), data flow, and data
store.

1.2 Designing Program

Coding without much thought or planning is tempting, this can lead to disastrous results, such as
inefficient programs, code that does not work with other code, and a system that doesn’t do what it’s
supposed to do.

There are a lot of program design techniques, one of them that is going to discuss in this paper is
“top-down” modular

Each module, can change without affecting the rest of the directions.

2. Structure Charts

The structure chart is an important technique that helps the analyst design the program for the new
system. The structure chart shows all the components of code that must be included in a program at
a high level, arranged in a hierarchical format that implies sequence (in what order components are
invoked), selection (under what condition a module is invoked), and iteration (how often a
component is repeated). The components are usually read from top to bottom, left to right, and they
are numbered by a hierarchical numbering scheme in which lower levels have an addi-tional level
of numbering.

Structure charts can be helpful in the building of many types of systems because they emphasize
structure and reusability, charac-teristics of any good program.

2.1 Sntax

A structure chart is composed of modules (lines of program code that per-form a single function)
that work together to form a program (Figure 10-7). The modules are depicted by a rectangle and
connected by lines, which represent the passing of control. A control module is a higher-level
component that contains the logic for performing other modules, and the components that it calls
and controls are considered subordinate modules.

2.2

3. Program Spesification

Modules on the structure chart are described by the use of program specifications,written
documents that include explicit instructions on how to program pieces of code. Typically, project
team members write one program specification for each module on the structure chart and then pass
them along to programmers, who write the code during the implementation phase of the project.
Specifications must be very clear and easy to understand, or else programmers will be slowed down
trying to decipher vague or incomplete instructions.

3.1 Syntax

There is no formal syntax for a program spesification

Program spesification consist of Program Information, Events, Inputs and Outputs, Pseudocode.