Preparing for Design › Set Development Standards › Choose a Procedure Style

Choose a Procedure Style

Automated procedures should employ the styles most appropriate for each type of system user. In design, this involves deciding which style should be used for each procedure in a system.

The choice of procedure style is usually limited by organizational standards, which are influenced by:

• Strategic direction—There may be a policy to develop systems to a preferred style. For example, if the organization has standardized use of a database management system supporting distributed data, “remote data access” might be preferred.
• Target production environment—The best style option could involve the use of powerful client machines. If these are not in place, that style option may not be possible.
• Cost—The cost of implementing different styles will vary. Some may be prohibitively expensive.

The frequency of procedures performed and their physical location will also influence the choice of styles for the system. It might be that a number of activities are performed in one location only, and so need not be distributed.

The system might have to reuse a significant amount of code from existing systems or off-the-shelf packages. This may influence the choice of style.

More information:

Designing the System Structure