Today I started to write the design chapter for the book. I was trying to collect my thoughts on object-oriented design. The more I thought about it, the more hopeless the task seemed. I think it is impossible to define a single template that would apply to any software project. In my opinion, the approach to design, varies vastly across the different kinds of project.
If I were designing a real-time system, I would worry mostly about real time issues such as deadlocks, live locks, deadlines, etc. If I were designing a typical enterprise system, I would worry about very different things, say, service partitioning, database design, accessibility, security, etc.
So, I think what we’ll do is to provide a simple template in the book, and then expand the topic on a web-site.
I can see that I could develop many different templates, each specialized for a particular kind of system. Not that I think that there is a fixed template for any kind of system, but I do believe that such templates can be used as starting points for customized processes.
I think a template for design must have a set of optional features. Maybe I can create a template where a user can clearly see when to include a step.
For example, if your system contains data that must not get in the hands of outside agents, then include this “encrypt sensible field “step.
It will be an exciting task I’m sure :-)