The 4 + 1 View Model

In this post, I will discuss several things: first a video about the 4+1 View Model, second a very cute video named the six blind men that makes us understand in better way the model that we are talking about, and finally we will discuss the article: The Elephant and the Blind Programmers written by Grady Booch, which deals with the same topic.

In the first video, we saw that like in architecture, in software engineering are several views that we need to take into account while developing software, there are 4 + 1 views that are important for this task, these views are:

Logical view: this view tells us what kind of objects we are going to build, how they communicate and what kind of data they are.
Development view: it is useful for developers to always know which part is related to what else and how things are organized during development.
Process view: describes the concurrency and synchronized aspects in the software and the process of using the software or doing things.
Physical view: it tells us how the software and the hardware are related.
And what about the + 1? we have the use cases or scenarios: they are the explanation on how the system is expected to behave, what should happen and how users are supposed to use the system. 
Why the views are important? In a software engineering project, we have a lot of information, so it is important to view this information from different perspectives to understand clearly what the system should do.

The second video tells us, in a very nice way, a fable from India that illustrates the inability of man to know the absolute truth.
Grady Booch takes as his basis the same fable to tell us the story of five blind programmers who meet a beast and when examining it, each one has a different point of view that claims to be the correct one without even considering the points of view of the other programmers. Finally, the wisest programmer told the rest, that they were all right and that the reason their views differed was that each one had examined the beast with a different set of concerns, but that the creature had all the characteristics that they observed.

In conclusion, it is important to have different points of view while working on a software development project and with all the information in it, each point of view focuses on different aspects that arise from the observation of a person with certain knowledge, skills, and field of action. Remember: we are correct, but so are others!

Comentarios

Publicar un comentario

Entradas populares de este blog

Software Craftsmanship

Imagen
I n this post, I will discuss the podcast: "Software Craftsmanship", with Bob Martin (Uncle Bob) produced by Software Engineering Radio in 2009. This podcast is about agile software development and software craftsmanship. This podcast reminded me of two past posts on this blog,  one called Is Design Dead?  and the other called Who needs an architect? In which the role of the software architect is largely discussed, and also agile design and methods. The first idea that I think it is important to mention and that I also support is that  Uncle Bob  thinks that software architects should not stop programming, because the separation of the leaders and the developers, concludes in bad decisions that can complicate the projects, it is important that they keep their fingers on the keyboard, in this way they understand better the problems that arise and can better lead a team and carry out more complex designs. Robert explains in the podcast what is the software Craftmans
Leer más

Microservices

Imagen
In this post, I will discuss the article: "Microservices: a definition of this new architectural term", written by y James Lewis and Martin Fowler. First, it is important to understand what the term "Microservice Architecture" means, a microservice architectural style is an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its own process and communicating each other. These services are built around business capabilities and are independently deployable. Microservices have a great advantage over a monolithic application,because this style does not put all the functionality into a single process, and  if you want to make a change you do not need to rebuild the application. This article and this term, reminds me of the activity we had in the first class of the subject Software Design and Architecture, where we reflect on the concept an importance of modules and components using Lego blocks. The microservi
Leer más

Who Needs an Architect?

Imagen
I n this post, I will discuss the article: "Who needs an architect? " , written by Martin Fowler. In the last entry we defined the software architecture as a high-level design, the IEEE definition also defines architecture as “the highest level concept of a system in its environment. The architecture of a software system is its organization or structure of significant components interacting through interfaces".  It seems that Martin Fowler and many other people do not agree with his definition, like Ralph Johnson, who tells us there's no highest level concept of a system. The best definition they propose is the following:“In most successful software projects, the expert developers working on that project have a shared understanding of the system design. This shared understanding is called ‘ architecture. ’ This understanding includes how the system is divided into components and how the components interact through interfaces.” Sounds better to me, because
Leer más