The discipline of software engineering provides
a number of techniques that aid the software
developer (or development team) to construct
reliable software.
Testing, for example, is a technique to establish
in an experimental way the reliability and
robustness of software.
Another way of validating a system is by means
of correctness proofs, checking whether the program (design)
meets its (formal) specification.
Software engineering perspectives
4
- validating object-oriented software
- metrics of object-oriented design
- formal specification methods
Additional keywords and phrases:
testing, black-box methods, white-box methods, correctness proofs
slide: Software engineering perspectives
Another area in which the discipline of software engineering
has made a contribution is in measuring the
structural complexity of software.
Such measures may be used as indicators, for example
to estimate the time needed to develop a system
or the cost involved in maintenance.
In this chapter, we will explore to what extent
and how these techniques may be incorporated in an
object-oriented approach.
Also, the outline of a formal framework for
developing object-oriented software will be sketched,
merging the ideas developed when studying object-oriented
design and the insights coming from a software
engineering perspective.