System design phase

֎ Explain the difference between each of the following pairs:

➢ Physical design and logical design
 Physical design (System design)
• The system design is the conversion of the logical design to a technical
solution, via the process of the design of the system components.
• concerns with technical solution
 Logical design (System analysis)
• is the abstract representation of the data flows, inputs and outputs of the
business system. This is often conducted via various modeling, such as:
DFDs and DD..
• concerns with business system.
֎ Explain the main output from the logical design directed to physical
design?

֎ Define System Design

 System design is the process of defining the elements of a system such as the
architecture, modules and components, the different interfaces of those
components and the data that goes through that system, to satisfy specific needs
and requirements of a business or organization.
֎ System design requirements to be designed
 Input requirement,
 Output requirements,
 Interface requirements,
 Storage requirements,
 Processing requirements,
 System control and backup or recovery.
֎ Four sub-tasks of system design
 Building the system technical architecture
 User Interface Design: it covers input, output, and interface design, and
pertains to how users add information to the system and with how the system
presents information back to them.
 Data Design: it pertains to how the data is represented and stored within the
system.
 Process Design: it pertains to how data moves through the system, and with
how and where it is validated, secured and/or transformed as it flows into,
through and out of the system.
Omnia Khaled
֎ Explain System Design Context
 System design can be viewed, from other context, as including three developing
stages:
• System-level technical requirements (Top-level design)
• system designs (Low-level design)
• Assessing the design's ability to meet the system requirements.
֎ Explain the difference between each of the following pairs:
➢ Top-level design and Low-level design
 Top-level design (TLD)
• sometimes called High-level design (HLD), sometimes called Preliminary
design
• explains the architecture that would be used for developing a software
product.
 Low-level design (LLD)
• sometimes called Detailed design
• exposes the logical detailed design of each of these elements for
programmers.
• As you dive deeper, you are looking at:
▪ Looking at error handling (exception cases).
▪ Looking at needed and efficient algorithm
֎ System Design Phase Objectives
 The conversion of the business system requirements, system improvement
objectives, into technical solution based system.
֎ Explain the meaning and need to the Assess the design's meeting the
system requirements, State three techniques used to fulfill this
objectives
 Requirements traceability is a critical activity during the design, development,
and deployment of a system
 Traceability is also the foundation for the change process within a project or
program, when needed and applied.
 The objective is to guarantee achievement of the user requirements.
• Any changed requested by the end user should be formulated through
“change request”.
• System tests should be applied with the participation of the programmer
and designer to guarantee the restricted fulfillment of the technical
specification defined in the system design phase.
• Acceptance tests should be applied with the participation of the
programmer, designer, and analyst to guarantee the restricted fulfillment
of the business functions and system capabilities defined in the system
analysis phase.

Omnia Khaled
֎ State the inputs of the system design phase
 Business requirements from definition phase
 Design requirements from configuration phase
 Technology integration requirements from procurement phase
֎ State the outputs of the system design phase
 Technical set of design components specification depicting:
• The structure/of the database
• The structure/of the overall applications
• The structure/of the user interface
• The structure/of the computer network
֎ State the employed techniques of the system design phase
 Employed tools, Approaches to design phase can be:
• Traditional
• waterfall methodology
• Agile methodology
֎ State the activities of the system design phase
 Define and design the database
 Define and design the outputs
 Define and design the inputs
 Define and design the interfaces
 Define and design the networking aspects
 Define and design the processes
 Define and design any missing system control such as security, backup,recovery
֎ State the responsible of the system design phase
 System analyst
 Design specialists including:
• Database specialists (for database design)
• Network specialists (for network design)
• Human interface specialists (for user interface design)
 System Users
֎ Explain the need to prototyping technique
 Prototyping
• It is an iterative process involving a close work between the designer and
the user to build a simplified models of the target system allowing the
users to early feel and adjust the implemented system.

Omnia Khaled
֎ Explain the advantages of prototyping technique
 It allows end-user participation which leads to improve end user view and
understanding the system leading to maximize his support to the system.
 Iterative process in the prototyping allows fulfilling the end-user requirements
 it increases the productivity since it allows quicker end user feedback which
lead to better solutions
 It allows the detection of the errors more quickly
 It accelerates the several phases of the life cycle, and can consolidate some
phases that occur one after another
֎ Explain the disadvantages of prototyping technique
 It returns the “code, implement, and repair” philosophy which introduce some
problems.
 Prototype can not replace the paper work specification completely.
 The scope and complexity of the system can expand beyond the original plan.

Omnia Khaled