SDAP :: Introducing Design Documentation

Prerequisites

You should have a fair amount of knowledge on programming and at least a little knowledge about software design before beginning this lesson.

Before listening to the lecture, please read the Preface, Forward, Guide to Readers and Chapter 1 of Design Patterns by the Gang of Four.

Lecture

The lecture is a short, 7 minute lecture on the importance of design documentation.

Yes, I went a little overboard on the added foley and sound effects, but hey, I was having fun... hopefully you'll enjoy it.

 Click here to download the lecture.

Assignments

Make sure you have completed Subversion Part 1 and Simplest C/CPP Program before starting these exercises.

I mentioned three design patterns in this lecture... what were they?

In the Design Patterns book, read the chapters that explain those design patterns, then listen to the lecture again. You can skip two-thirds of the way into the lecture to get to the place where I mentioned them.

Do you understand what I said better, now that you understand the three design patterns that I mentioned?

Next,  read this article. It should give you a basic understanding of class diagram.

After reading the article and listening to the lecture a couple of times, draw a class diagram of the system I mentioned. You can use any software you prefer, but make sure you export it to design.jpg in the directory as shown below.

Create a new Visual Studio project in your SDAP solution named dsgn1 and create as much of the header files as you can that implements the class diagram you created.

Finally, create a doxygen project and generate the html. The project should use the following directory structure:

C:\sdap\dsgn1
           dsgn1.vcproj
           I_*.hpp (all of your public headers)
           design.jpg
           \src
               *.hpp (all of your private headers)
               *.cpp (all of your private implementation)
           \html
               *.* (all of the generated doxygen documentation)

Check In Your Work

When you're finished, check it into your Subversion repository.

In Explorer, right click on the C:\SDAP folder, click on TortoiseSVN, then click on Add...

You will see a list of all of the files you've added since your last checkin. Next click on OK. That will give you a list of added files. Click on OK.

Now your C:\SDAP folder will show a read exclamation point (if it didn't already). Right click on the C:\SDAP folder and click on SVN Commit.

This will show you a dialog box that has the list of modified and added files, and also a message.

Please note: It is very important to enter a good, descriptive message that indicates the reason for your changes.

For this checkin, feel free to enter something like Finished Introducing Design Documentation.

Click on OK when you've entered your descriptive message.