CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2012/ch2a 2w23 sr

Responsibility-Driven Design

Introduction

Object-oriented programming(OOP) language enable software to be reusable, refinable, testable, maintainable, and extensible by supporting encapsulation. In order to realize these advantages, encapsulation should be maximized during the design process. other techniques attempt to enforce encapsulation during the implementation phase. This is too late in the software life-cycle to achieve maximum benefits.

Responsibility-driven design(RRD) is an alternate design method to focus on increasing the encapsulation by viewing a program in terms of the client/server model.<ref>http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=74877.74885 Object-oriented design: a responsibility-driven approach</ref> This method was proposed by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Brian Wilkerson.

Definition

RRD is defined as follows:

Responsibility-driven design is inspired by the client/server model. It focuses on the contract by asking:

• What actions is this object responsible for?
• What information does this object share?<ref>1</ref>

Client-server model

The goal of responsibility-driven design is to improve encapsulation. It does so by viewing a program in terms of the client/server model.

Responsibility-driven design principles

• Maximize Abstraction

Initially hide the distinction between data and behavior.

Think of objects responsibilities for “knowing”, “doing”,and “deciding”.

• Distribute Behavior

Promote a delegated control architecture.

Make objects smart—-have them behave intelligently, not just hold bundles of data.

• Preserve Flexibility

Design objects so interior details can be readily changed.

Advantages

The benefit is increased encapsulation, since the specification of the exact way in which a request is carried out is private to the server. Encapsulation is compromised when the structural details of an object become part of the interface. Responsibility-driven designs maximize encapsulation by ignoring the structural details.

References

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