8. Designing and Constructing Software – Code-Related Issues

There comes a point in every project when the software design must be turned into a working product. Central to this is the:

• Development of the application-level source code
• Organization and packaging of this code into sets of program units
• Development of low-level (service software) source code
• Organization and packaging of this code into appropriate program units
• Integration of these various program units
• Incorporation and integration of library units (especially commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)) software components
• Documentation of the work in an organized, useful, understandable, and maintainable manner

How well we handle this depends on many factors; here, we will limit ourselves to code development issues.

This chapter sets out to show:

• The fundamental approaches that can be used in the design and construction of software
• How the choice of technique has...