ABSTRACT DATA VIEWS - AN INTERFACE SPECIFICATION CONCEPT TO ENHANCE DESIGN FOR REUSE

The abstract data view (ADV) design model was originally created to specify clearly and formally the separation of the user interface from the application component of a software system, and to provide a systematic design method that is independent of specific application environments, Such a method should lead to a high degree of reuse of designs for both interface and application components, The material in this paper extends the concept of ADV's to encompass the general specification of interfaces between application components in the same or different computing environments, This approach to specifying interfaces clearly separates application components from each other, since they do not need to know how they are used, or how they obtain services from other application components, Thus, application components called abstract data objects (ADO's) in this paper, are designed to minimize knowledge of the environment in which they are used and should be more amenable to reuse.