Design Units — A Framework for Design Driven Software Development

Abstract

As software systems get more complicated, the task of the system developer becomes increasingly difficult and time consuming. The focus of this paper is on the development of a well-designed framework that supports code generation in the context of a use case design methodology. Its foundation is the use case based approach that partitions the design schemata into a layered architecture of functional components called design units. Our approach provides the basis for the generation of modular, well-structured code and a means of keeping a high-level design and its implementation consistent. Such properties as tracedbility, reusability, modularity and change management are achieved by applying design unit concepts to the design and code generation process.