Reflections on Session 12

We are heading closer and closer to the final! I sense that some students are running out of gas? A few students did not complete the Session 12 assignments and I am a bit concerned. Please e-mail me if you have personal issues and/or conflicts so we can work things out.

A handful of students struggled with this data flow diagram mini-project because many had flowcharts ingrained in their minds. My guess is that many had taken a procedural programming class before and learned the need to build a flowchart to show the sequential operations including decision points and stepwise operations.

When I think flowchart, I think of this classic one:



Well, a dataflow diagram is quite different. Some say it is more object-oriented. It shows the information flows among processes, entities (internal and external), and data stores.

This modeling is important for one to understand the processes involved -- including the underlying subprocesses. Without this knowledge, the developer cannot do his/her job in developing a system that would support those real-world processes.