Data-Directed Systems Design
by Martin Modell
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, NY; 1992

Author's Note: This book is currently out of print. It is reproduced here from the author's original manuscript and does not reflect the editing and revisions by the publisher - McGraw-Hill. The illustrations have been scanned from a published copy of the book. This electronic version and its illustrations are copyright to the author Martin Modell, and as such may not be copied or reproduced in any manner. This text is posted for and its contents may be used for educational purposes - limited portions may be cited. Any portions of the content thus cited must contain the copyright information to be found at the bottom of each chapter and at the bottom of this page


Table of Contents

Part 1 - Foundations of Systems Design

Those who fail to remember the past are condemned to relive it - Santyana

This book is intended to provide the concepts and techniques of systems design. Systems design, as with any process is grounded in certain concepts which control what, when, why and how the activities of the process occur. Part I presents many of the foundation principles and concepts upon which the structure of system design rests.

Part II - Frameworks

Sometimes it is difficult to the see the forest because all the trees get in the way.

Part II concentrates on the concept of frameworks. Frameworks are the structures around which system designs are developed. In some books this topic has been called system architectures.

Frameworks are developed to provide structure for the system. Frameworks are also developed to provide the system designer with scope and direction for the system design. Frameworks can be constructed for data, procedures or to assist the designer in verifying system completeness.

Part III - User Perspectives

Part II concentrated on the development of both data and processing frameworks which scope and guide the system design. These frameworks provide the structure and the outline of the system.

Part III concentrates on the principles and techniques which underlie the development of the detailed data and task design which is at the heart of the system design. Arrival at and description of this detail is one of the primary goals of the design process. The system must describe in detail what tasks will be performed, the steps that constitute each tasks to be performed, and the data and data access requirements of each task.

Although the data and processing frameworks of the system were developed separately using deductive techniques, we shall see that the detail components of the system must be developed concurrently using inductive techniques.

Part IV - Data and Documentation

... the woof and the warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols; so it is wrong t say that a good language is important to good thought, merely, for it is the essence of it - Charles Sanders Pierce

Data Element identification and documentation is the final level of the design process. Part IV discusses both the analysis of data and the documentation of the design process in the dictionary

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Data Directed Systems Design - A Professional's Guide
Written by Martin E. Modell
Copyright © 2007 Martin E. Modell
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.