CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2007/wiki3 3 33

Topic - Separation of Responsibility

Take the principle of Separation of Responsibility and catalog the information on it available on the Web. Find good descriptions and good, concise, understandable examples. Tell which you consider the best to present to a class.'

Concepts

Separation of responsibility (abbreviated as SoR from this point on) is also known as seperation of concern (SoC). In the field of software engineering, this concept probably finds its root in one paper from Dijsktra in the year 1974. Since then SoR became a well accepted concept that helps programmers in designing, implementing and many other aspects of software development.

The essence of the SoR concept is that one foucs on doing one thing and do it well, with out being entangled or distracted by other entity. To elaborate, it is well known that developing a fully functional software in time and meet the needs of clients is challenging due to the intricate nature of the process. Often, software developing requires a group of team developers to cooperate on a project. By effectively seperate out non or minimally overlapped concerns (or tasks, even domains), developers are able to concentrate on just one part of the system, instead of having to worry about all other miniture details. In this way, the integrated system achieve the modulizing effect and is therefore more maintainable, readable and flexible.

project/architecture level separation of responsibility

MVC

References

http://www.exciton.cs.rice.edu/JavaResources/DesignPatterns/MVC.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns