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Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart

Anytime you open up a design tool, and see something like this ...

... you know you'll need stiff drink at the end of the day. It doesn't matter if the boxes represent tables or classes – it's a complicated mess. In this case, the screenshot is from a Visual Studio 2005 Analysis Services project.

Anyone have some aspirin to spare?

Print | posted @ Thursday, August 23, 2007 1:12 AM

Comments on this entry:

Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by Anonymous Coward at 8/23/2007 2:44 AM
Hey, it's the windows OS class diagram
  
Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by Moz at 8/23/2007 3:49 AM
Yes, scary. When I started my current job I ran an automated tool to build a class diagram. I mean, it's a non-trivial project, it's useful to see how it all links together.

On a standard page, the diagram is solid black. Not so much because there's a lot of classes (700), but because there are so many linkages and there's no way to arrange those to not look like a mess. Everything just links to everything. In every possible way: inheritance; encapsulation; references; interfaces, you name it.
  
Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by rtw at 8/23/2007 6:08 AM
Q: What do you need when the program/database is structed like that and you don't have a design tool available.


A: A .22 and 1 bullet
  
Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by Jens at 8/23/2007 7:06 AM
OKAY, you're going to need a stiff drink. But when I look closely, I see a cloud with 7 to 8 central blocks, and a lot of the other blocks only link to those center blocks. It seems that this is a model of an application that does 7 to 8 things. Something like a mini ERP system.
The question is if there is a way to develop an app like that without ending up with a class- or data-model like that. I'd like to hear your thoughts about that, as I'm working on an app that is heading the same way.
  
Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by scott at 8/23/2007 1:22 PM
Jens:

The idea in your scenario would be to reduce the coupling between classes (modules, services, pieces of functionality) in the ERP system as much as possible.

I'd look at design patterns and tools that can give you inversion of control and dependency injection. Keep the modules as isolated as possible so that a change in A doesn't ripple into B, and both A and B can be tested in isolation.
  
Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by Eric Sowell at 8/23/2007 1:26 PM
You know what scares me worse than that? Starting a new gig, opening up a sql diagram with all the tables in the database, and seeing NO lines because they don't have any foreign keys in the db. THAT'S scary.
  
Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by Jens at 8/23/2007 2:42 PM
Scott,

I know that the idea would be to reduce the coupling, what I really wanted to know was how much less edges should there be on the diagram before the fear starts to disapear ?
After all, there is only so much coupling you can eliminate.
  
Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by Moz at 8/24/2007 4:17 AM
I'm a big fan of trees instead of nests. If you can keep things linking either up or across but very rarely both the whole system is easier to maintain. Admittedly I tend to leave data carriers out of that analysis, and in code use records/structs for that task so it's obvious which is which.
  
Gravatar # re: Images That Strike Fear In A Developer's Heart
by scott at 8/24/2007 1:47 PM
Jens:

Well, there will always be edges. I guess the answer would be "it depends".

If you can program to abstractions (like the interface IOrderService) instead of concrete implementations (OrderService) than it can help to keep these different modules/services/areas of functionality loosely coupled.
  
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