Systems design
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Systems design is the process or art of defining the hardware and software architecture, components, modules, interfaces, and data for a computer system to satisfy specified requirements. One could see it as the application of systems theory to computing. Some overlap with the discipline of systems analysis appears inevitable.
Prior to the standardization of hardware and software in the 1990s which resulted in the ability to build modular systems, systems design had a more crucial and respected role in the data processing industry. The increasing importance of software running on generic platforms has enhanced the discipline of software engineering at the expense of systems design.
Object-oriented analysis and design methods are becoming the most widely used methods for system design. The UML has become the standard language used in Object-oriented analysis and design. It is widely used for modeling software systems and is increasingly used for designing non-software systems and organizations.
System designers are in between business analysts and technical experts.
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[edit] Processes and methods
URDAD, the Use-case/responsibility driven analysis and design method provides an algorithmic process for designing a system in a way which encourages good design principles.
[edit] Missions Technology
Computer technology has been fueled by Moore's Law. From fundamental capabilities and basic capacities the law propelled the growth of information technology. Beginning with the technology advances of integrated circuits thesetranslated to high level devices and delivery peripherals further leading to the building of standalone systems such as ERP. From the earliest building blocks to components, then systems and now to missions. Today the emphasis is on integrating these systems into an extended enterprise. Beyond that the next generation of product offerings will be the development delivery and execution of extended enterprise missions.
Missions integrate methods and processes that work through technology and without-technology. They form part of the overall extended enterprise but enforce a critical requirement - the development and execution of a concept or a mission that belongs to the extended enterprise and utilizes the whole to achieve the objective.
Enterprise Missions are complex entities. The complexity begins with the software and business process specifications and the architecture and design required to achieve its purpose. Additionally non-technology processes have to be integrated into the whole and is a crucial component of the mission.
Once defined the mission is built executed and its objective reached. The organizational structures that define the mission will differ from existing management and executive trees. In a war the General is now in charge. In the future the Technology & Process Builders will be in charge with the General reporting to them.
The Intraclient Waterford College of English Studies is a mission. The Rolling Stones concert tour is a mission.
Doom can be recreated as a mission. Pixar is a missions technology company itunes and Ipod could be moulded into a missions proposition.
A mission is a large scale technological deployment of a product or space that is occupied by an enterprise and contributes a major portion of its objective to corporates revenues. It also is a major share of the net income .
Common Characteristics of Missions are 1.Architectural Complexity and Process Conceptualization 2. Concurrent processing (hardware & software) 3. Contention for shared resources (CPU, memory, channels, disk, etc) 4. Dynamic Interactions and integration between technological and manual Subsystems, methods and modes. 5. Performance dictated by channel protocols (e.g. arbitration policies, transfer modes, co-channel interference, collisions) 6. Static analysis techniques like queuing theory ignore channel contention – providing theoretical upper bound on performance (poor predictive value for architectural tradeoffs) 7. Complex Functionality 8. Validation of complex algorithms and protocols is essential 9. Quantitative and/or qualitative performance dictated by algorithmic tradeoff studies
The Solution comprises of an Integrated Approach for HW and SW and the development of the - Operational Environment (mobiles, basestations, etc) using Channel Models. shared resources and concurrent processes. The architecture is built for transaction and workloads and future generation system design requirements. This is a total integeration approach combining manual, emotional and technical methods and process into a single approach and managing that approach. The systems are developed with the necessary overall concepts, algorithms, protocols and controls to gain advantage over competitors and to secure and achieve the objective. To calculate progress, behavioral and performance analysis is built into the process. The design specification calls for all these as an executable specification of the various technological and non-technical components and interfaces.
Balram Shotam of Palo Alto, California invented the term Missions Technology (MST) and foresees it as the a new way for software companies to emerge within the industrial complex.
