Basically if I employed you to write a C program for me what documentation would you expect me to hand you to work from. I have a requirements specification, data flow diagrams, entity relationship model and information on all the data items that will be involved in the program.
You're quite complete. Usually the client only offers a User Requirements Specification.
The only other thing you need is a test plan, cross-referenced to the requirement specification, which allows you to run an agreed set of tests, to show you that all the requirements have been implemented.
Thank you both for your prompt replies.
The follow on question would be how do you turn the logical design into the practical design. My C programming has mostly been bug fixing and upgrading old programs. Now I have done the analysis for a new program, but I have never written a program from scratch before, so I am a bit unsure of the next stage. I have done some flow charts of how I think the main logic will work, and some pseudocode for the major algorithms, am I going in the right direction?
> am I going in the right direction?
Yes
> I have done some flow charts of how I think the main logic will work, and some pseudocode for the major algorithms
You basically continue this process until you're reasonably confident that you understand all the issues. Complex areas will obviously need more work and attention.
You should be aiming to get something which hangs together (no loose ends or unexplained bits), and where you think each line of pseudo code would translate to say 3 to 5 lines of C
When you're done, it really helps if you can find someone to review the design with you, to help sort out any problems.
>..how do you turn the logical design into the practical design.
I think this cannot be learned just from books. It takes experience to really understand how to do this. So this time it will be quite hard, but next time it'll be a little easier. But it never will be really easy.
