Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development, Third Edition

Chapter 35. Package Design

	If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?
	--Seymour Cray

Objectives

• Organize packages to reduce the impact of changes.

• Know alternative UML package structure notation.

Introduction

If some package X is widely depended upon by the development team, it is undesirable for X to be very unstable (going through many new versions), since it increases the impact on the team in terms of constant version re-synchronization and fixing dependent software that breaks in response to changes in X (version thrashing).

This sounds—and is—obvious, but sometimes a team does not pay attention to identifying and stabilizing the most depended-upon packages, and ends up experiencing more version ...