COMP 310 Spring 2010	Lec30: Chat Program Interfaces

Today we will develop the common Java interfaces that we will need to enable everyone's chat program to interact.

Some basic notions to consider:

• Minimal and Complete -- Strive for the minimum number of methods that for a complete set, enabling all required operations to be performed.
• Orthogonality --  All methods should be maximally independent of each other and not perform operations that are also partially performed by other methods.
• Implementation Independent --  The user of a method or object should not be concerned with how it is implemented.    
• Flexibility -- All possible operations must be able to be accomplished with the defined set of operations and objects without the need for special cases.
• Extensibility -- The addition of new operations and/or capabilities should not require major reconfiguration of the system, preferably no changes at all. 
• Robustness --  The system should be designed to gracefully handle user or other errors that may occur.
• Security --  The system should be gracefully disallow deliberate attempts to circumvent proper operation.

© 2010 by Stephen Wong