problems in applying structured approach

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What could be problems encountered in applying Structured approachs?

-- Manjula (psma@pacific.net.sg), November 19, 1999

Answers

There are a number of problems. For starters, it is hard to communicate your design to the users. You throw a bunch of diagrams up on the overhead and they fall asleep. With the object oriented approach, you first pick the objects that are part of the business environment and that everyone understands. You then identify the ways in which these objects act, interact, flow through the business. Again, the user should understand this. Each object and its actions is then given its own package (Ada, PL/SQL) or class (C++).

The next problem is the difficulty of maintaining the program done using a structured approach. The structured approach focuses on processes (actions), not things. Therefore a number of constructs that belong to the same thing (object) may be spread throughout the program. If the nature of that thing or it's behaviour changes, someone will have to poke through the program, trying to figure out what code relates to the object that just changed. When each object and it's behaviours are encapsulated into a package (or class), then it is easy to see where the code needs to change.

-- Amy Leone (leoneamy@aol.com), November 23, 1999.


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