Software Design Architecture Comparison

Revision as of 00:20, 5 February 2016

Background:

Is there background reading material?

What is the rational for this activity?

For students, who are often novice and beginner developers, it is critical to understand the big-picture when jumping into a new software project. A proper view of the system-wide architecture can bring context on how the entire system works, instead of focus on a particular component. When you can have knowledge of other pieces of the puzzle, you tend to implement better code because it is thoughtful of how your current focus interacts with functionality around it and even to functionality seemingly far-removed. Students need to be aware of why this helps them and their career, how to find this kind of documentation, and that it might shape their opinions and focus when choosing projects to interact with.

Are there any similar activities?

See OpenMRS_Design_Reverse_Engineering_Activity_(Android_App) for an activity that has students reverse engineer a design / architecture from an existing open source Android applications codebase.

Background reading:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/704855/software-design-vs-software-architecture
• http://www.openu.ac.il/personal_sites/download/galezer/SoftwareDesign.pdf
  • This paper describes how they had to get students to re-think how they write code. The students needed to think more outside of the syntax of the actual language, and more toward software design / repeatable design patterns that dont depend on the coding language.
  • I am looking at this paper and thinking about the various tasks or activities that they show were done in their classroom. I may be able to use these ideas.
  • “It should be re-emphasized that practical programming does not play a central role in the unit. At the end of the year students and teachers realized that programming in itself is not the main goal.”
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/268231/how-to-learn-good-software-design-architecture
• http://cc2e.com/
• Code Complete Book - Design chapter
  • ‘Design’ is similar to my definition of ‘software-architecture’, except that design can pervade into lower levels of classes and routines and code
• Gof Design Patterns
• GoF Design Patterns Explained
• Research Paper: Design patterns in open source
• Book: Architecture of Open Source Applications - from Tom
  • http://www.aosabook.org/en/eclipse.html
  • https://wiki.eclipse.org/Learn_About_Eclipse
  • http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Whitepaper-Platform-3.1/eclipse-platform-whitepaper.pdf
  • htp://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/
• Openstack Oslo - from email to listserv
  • https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Oslo#Principles
  • https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Oslo#Design_Proposals
  • http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/oslo-specs/

Directions:

Part 1: Software design background

Is this even needed? Maybe we make these assumptions in the pre-req's

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Part 2: Eclipse and OpenStack introductions

In this activity, we will focus on the Eclipse IDE (Platform) project and the OpenStack cloud project. Below, you will learn about these projects and their open communities. After this, you will compare and contrast the design and architecture artifacts available in these communities.

Both projects are open source and very large, with many hundreds of participants. Be aware that

Eclipse is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that runs on desktop computers. An IDE is basically a fancy code-editor for developers who are creating software. A developer needs not only edit code in text files, but also to run the code, debug the code (possibly stepping throught the code one-line at a time, looking for a bug), they need to see hierarchical views of the classes, and have ease-of-use functions like code completion (you can remember which function you want to use, and it gives you a list while you are typing). Eclipse centers on Java development, though it is also usable for dozens of other languages. Do not confuse the 'Eclipse IDE' with the 'Eclipse Foundation', which was created after the successful IDE and now encompasses hundreds of open source project.

Because these are projects that you may know little or nothing about, first delve into the basics. Gather a quick understanding of each project from a user's point of view. What functionality does each project provide its users? Next, gather some technical statistics. Use tools such as Ohloh (now OpenHub) to get general technical stats and background. What programming languages are used? What percentage of the code are comments? Mention other general statistics or information that might be helpful when reading into a projects design and architecture.

What functionality does each project provide its users? What programming languages are used? What percentage of the code are comments? Other?

Part 3: Comparison

Deliverables:

What will the student hand in?

Assessment:

How will the activity be graded?

How will learning will be measured?

Include sample assessment questions/rubrics.

Comments:

What should the instructor know before using this activity?

Encourage students to find new design and architecture information. They should be scouring the sites wiki's, code, documentation, etc. Because these communities are large, their resources will grow and change over time. What was there one semester, may not be there another semester. Or, they may add design documentation that formerly was not there. The links given to students should be a guide - they are not exhaustive.

What are some likely difficulties that an instructor may encounter using this activity?

Additional Information:

Suggestions for Open Source Community:

Suggestions for an open source community member who is working in conjunction with the instructor.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Appendix

Note: Can be removed later, or kept as a resource to teaches looking into other communities.

Software design - Potential communities to look into:

• Look at openshift’s software architecture
  • Software architecture?
  • Talk to someone on the team - get someone who is an expert and quiz them
• GNOME Shell - graphical environment - UI of Fedora - public iterative design to implementation
• GNOME Documents and Photos - iterative design
• Inkscape community
• Hacking and Contributing files
  • https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#-coding-rules
  • https://github.com/openshift/origin/blob/master/HACKING.md
  • https://github.com/colah/ImplicitCAD/blob/master/hacking.md
  • https://github.com/openstack-dev/hacking/blob/master/HACKING.rst
• Openstack design process - blueprints idea, where you write feature and how you want to do it, get sign off from community and then patches are reviewed and go through significant revision
  • Developers Guide - http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/developers.html
    • http://docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/project-setup/python.html
    • https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/
    • http://docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/open-community.html#technical-committee-and-ptl-elections
    • https://github.com/openstack-dev/hacking/blob/master/HACKING.rst
    • hacking.md files, Style Guides, Pep8,
  • http://docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/open-design.html
  • https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Blueprints
  • https://review.openstack.org/#/q/status:open
  • http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/developers.html
  • https://review.openstack.org/Documentation/intro-quick.html
  • http://docs.openstack.org/infra/system-config/gerrit.html