My contributions to the old TogetherSoft Coad Letter newsletter
- Issue 68, a New Beginning
In this issue, we apply Peter Coad's Domain Neutral Component to a simple but typical modeling example. I recently worked with a group that was struggling a little with applying the Domain Neutral Component to their object model. This example helped clarify some of the design trade offs involved. First, a bit of background for any that are new to modeling in color and the Domain Neutral Component...
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- Issue 70, Feature Driven Development and Extreme
Programming
Software development process is news again. Extreme Programming (XP) is the cause of much debate on a number of popular discussion forums. Feature Driven Development (FDD), pioneered by Jeff de Luca (www.nebulon.com) and Peter Coad, is another process with rapidly growing interest. Superficial similarities between FDD and XP hide a number of very important differences between the two processes. So, this month, a short comparison of FDD and XP.
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- Issue 71, From Associations to Domain Neutral
Management
It's been a busy month traveling to three cities in three weeks to give workshops. On the last of these I was accompanied by Karl Frank another of the Coad Certified Mentors at Togethersoft. During a rather indifferent, evening meal at a 1950's style diner (Yes - it really did look like something out of the old Happy Days television series), we discussed the correlation between the role labels that may be specified on the end of associations in UML and the yellow Role classes found in Pete's Domain Neutral Component. The following short set of notes is the result. I hope you enjoy them.
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- Issue 72, Chief Programmer Work Folders
Over the last couple of years many software development teams have started using internet technologies to build project repositories. Imagine the possibilities of combining products like Together, tools like Javadoc, web-enabled version control systems, calendars, discussion areas, databases and directory servers. This powerful combination provides a development team plenty of opportunities to capture, generate and link documents and other artifacts created throughout a project. The question that the technology does not answer is exactly what documents to create, capture and how best to link it all together. Therefore, this month, a short set of notes exploring the recording of artifacts produced during the two engine room processes of Feature Driven Development, Design By Feature (DBF) and Build By Feature (BBF).
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- Issue 73, Building Enterprise Systems
Trying new technology is always cool. However, 'because it would be cool' is not a sound basis for electing to use a technology on a project. Technology should always be selected on its merits; what advantages/disadvantages are there in using a particular technology. To put it another way; what risk does a specific technology introduce/mitigate in a project?
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- Issue 74, Modeling Historic Values
This month a handful of strategies to use when you need to keep old values around. I am assuming a working knowledge of Pete's modeling in color techniques and the four class archetypes. See issue #68 for a refresher or if you are new to the concepts.
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- Issue 76, Modeling User Roles
A question that keeps being asked by the teams I work with is,
how do we model the roles employees and users of a system play?
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- Issue 77, Comparing Object Models to the DNC
...we look at another way of using the Domain Neutral Component to help build better object models. This time we use the DNC to review existing object models.
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- Issue 78, Developer Ailments
Developers. You got to love them ... or else they leave you ... with a half-coded system and no documentation! This month a somewhat light-hearted look at some common ailments that seem to afflict developers throughout the world. All puns and bad jokes are intended. You have been warned!
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- Issue 79, The Example Teaches
Working with a team building an object model recently, I was reminded again of the power of a good example.
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- Issue 80, Accelerated Analysis
The first process of Feature Driven Development builds an initial, overall domain object model for a project. Modeling in color is the best technique I know of for doing this. A set of workshop style sessions is the best process I know of for doing this.
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- Issue 82, Description Class Archetype
an in-depth look at one of the four class archetypes used in the 'modeling in color' technique, the Description archetype. People often seem to become confused by the Green and Blue archetypes. I hope this month to help clarify the differences between the two a little more.
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- Issue 83, Use Case Dos and Don'ts - an Informal
Survey
One of my colleagues, Greg Cathcart, reminded me some time ago that there are people out there who have to use use cases for some reason or another. Also there are many people out there getting into terrible messes when using use cases. So I feel the need for a CoadLetter on the subject.
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- Issue 84, Communication, Communication,
Communication
Communication requires language. Within a development team different sub-teams use different languages. Some of these languages are textual, others are graphical and others are more mathematical in nature. There are languages for expressing requirements, defining interfaces, defining database tables, for communicating analysis and design models, for describing algorithms, for describing patterns, and a myriad of different programming languages for communicating instructions to a computer. Much of the work of a development team involves translating from one language into another.
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- Issue 85, Feature Driven Development - Projects and
People
The temptation when designing a process or managing a project is to treat people as if they are no more than ‘resources’. Many traditional project management tools unfortunately encourage this sort of thinking.
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- Issue 86, Integrating Best Practices
Like all good software development processes, Feature Driven Development is built around a core set of ‘best practices’. The chosen practices are not new but this particular blend of the ingredients is new. Each practice compliments and reinforces the others. The result is a whole greater than the sum of its parts...
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- Issue 88, Lists Considered Harmful
a look at the impact of lists on the usability and scalabilty of software systems. How many times have you had to wait forever for a system to display a long list of things that you then had to scroll through looking for the particular item you want? We look at three strategies for better handling of large lists.
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- Issue 90, Exceptional Strategies
we look at exceptions in Java and what makes them so exceptional.
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- Issue 91, Is UML Out of Date? (German Version)
Dies ist eine \bersetzung des in der Kolumne Modeling and Design des Coad Letters der Togethersoft-Homepage erschienen Artikels Is UML out of Date von Stephen Palmer [6]. Der Artikel greift einige Aspekte bez|glich UML auf, die mir so interessant scheinen, dass ich diesen Artikel auch einem breiteren Publikum zugdnglich machen mvchte. Eigene Anmerkungen oder Ergdnzungen sind in Schrdgschrift angegeben. An dieser Stelle ein Dankeschvn an Stephen Palmer und Peter Coad, dass ich den Artikel |bernehmen durfte.
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- Issue 103, Party Time
People! They make things so complicated! On bad days it can seem like the only thing more frustrating than people, are the organizations that they have created or for which they work:-). People and their organizations do not fit comfortably into highly structured, logical, organized software systems. Producing software that models people and organizations flexibly and efficiently is a challenge. Designing a general-purpose, reusable component to do so is even more challenging. The problem feels as if it should have a simple solution but I hope this month's issue of The Coad Letter will illustrate just how challenging this area can be ... and in the process, communicate some strategies for using the suggested attributes and operations found in the Peter Coad's four class archetypes.
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- Issue 107, Party Time (Part 2)
The green class archetype in Peter Coad's Modeling in Color with UML represents a party, place or thing (PPT) where a party is a legal entity, something or someone recognized by some court of law. There are essentially only two different kinds of Party, individual people and organizations
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- Issue 111, Using Stereotypes in Document Generation
Borland's Together ControlCenter includes a very powerful reporting engine. It is capable of generating plain text, RTF or HTML documents from models held in Together. Commonly referred to as GenDoc after the Java package name of its Together module, the engine works from user definable templates. In this article we examine three handy strategies for using GenDoc and introduce some of the basic GenDoc template designer concepts as we do so.
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- Issue 117, Strategies for Maintaining and Improving
Quality
Delivering high quality software is a stated goal of many development teams and it is a very admirable goal. To reach this goal we need to decide what high quality really means and we need to have some clue about how to achieve it.
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