Factory Homes Assignment

[Prashant Purkar]

Hi ,

Generating XML as input to the 3D modelling tool is required in this assignemnet for viewing options(pdf, image etc..)
Now none of my use cases talks about user using viewing options.

So should my assignmnet include solution to xml generation part?

Thanks
Prashant

[Prashant Purkar]

Hi ,

As the 3d modelling tool in not shown in the use case diagram, I guess design should not contain xml generation part.


P

[Victor-OE Cardona]

Hi Prashant

you are right the modeling tool is not mentioned in the uses cases but i think we should consider the integration of the tool in our design because it is required to provide visual feedback to the end user.

[William Taylor]

Can someone explain what Product means here? Will every component like Foundation, Wall, Roof and House itself be products?

Thanks a lot.

[Eoin Li]

I have exact questions you come up. I thought that Product is as house design -- not wall, fundation, roof, etc. Also I think that completedDesign vs product is 1:1 not many to many.

[Prashant Purkar]

Thanks victor, I agree we should consider the integration part but upto what level of detail is I am struggling with.
Will it be sufficient to show integration in component diagrama alone? or more specific deign interfaces are needed?
I also think not all project starts with everything that is a final deliverable and if its not in the use case
it might be to consider later on.


In my opinion Design is a collection of products which can be a a house or shopping mall or town homes etc..

So one can have a design (with predefined style and accessories) for individual house or 100 town homes with a mall in it.

And a Foundation, roof, wall etc are components of a house (or any product).



P

[Victor-OE Cardona]

Hi,

I think one should integrate the 3D modeling tool into the class diagram as interfaces without implementation, not just in the component diagram even when the uses cases don't specified to render a house design, so that the application is design base on the analysis phase 'Workshop Output'.

In the other hand, the uses cases mention 'current house design' and 'customer selects a house design' to complete it, does it means that there are partial designs? and the customer selects one of them to complete it ? or every time the customer uses the application should complete a house design, so that there aren't partial designs ?

what do you think?

[Prashant Purkar]

Hi ,

As per my understanding , a design is a presented to a user with complete predefined style and accessories and is not partial.

Complete house design here means, user is now done/complete with his/her changes and not the house design is complete.


Thanks
P

[Victor-OE Cardona]

Hi,

It means that when customer starts his/her house design he/she must complete it before the session is finalized (sorry for think on implementation). He/she can't retake later a house design (Partial) to complete it.

So that we must follow strictly the Business Domain Model, can't we make changes to BDM through assumptions?

strictly

[Prashant Purkar]

Hi Victor,

BDM is not covering that case is what i think, but considering practicality that doesn't mean design has to be completed in one session.

So its kind of implicit, I would not put that as assumption.

Regards
P

[Jose Luis Iturbide]

Hi ,

Generating XML as input to the 3D modelling tool is required in this assignemnet for viewing options(pdf, image etc..)
Now none of my use cases talks about user using viewing options.

So should my assignmnet include solution to xml generation part?

Thanks
Prashant

Hello

I think even none of the use cases mention anything about the graphic tool, you need to include the component that generates XML in the class diagram.

About the meaning of the Product class, I have two ideas:

1. it could represents a valid dwelling that includes information about the cost, construction time, etc. If this is correct I wonder Why the relationship: CompletedDesign 0..1 --- 1..* Product? In this case I think the relationship needs to be 1 to 1.

2. If it represents a valid combination among a restricted set of combinations, then the relationship needs to be CompletedDesign 0..* --- 1 Product.

The current cardinality makes me think that is possible to have many products = many houses per design.

What do you think?

[Victor-OE Cardona]

Hi Jose.

In order to explain the relationship 0..* ------1..* between CompleteDesign and Product one could say that a complete design is compose at least of one product in our case the product is a house, but as Prashant said:

"Design is a collection of products which can be a a house or shopping mall or town homes etc.. "

in this case the design of the application is open for extension. In this sense a product that could be a house could be in many * complete desing and the customer will know the cost for each complete design compose which is a collection of products.

[William Taylor]

Regarding the 3D modelling tool, I don't think we shall include it in the class diagram because it is an external interface. An SLSB VisualProcessor that depends on CompletedDesign in the class diagram will suffice.

I cannot agree that "Design is a collection of products which can be a a house or shopping mall or town homes etc.. ". I don't think the application is going to extend in this way. To design a shopping mall, user must complete design of a shopping mall instead of just designing a store then the system generates a shopping mall. It is still 1 to 1 in this regard. The only explanation making sense to me is to take house styles and accessories into account. Factory Homes might have multiple products with the same components (foundation, wall, roof and apertures). However, styles like number of rooms and location of garage as well as accessories might be different. In this way, one completed design can map to one or more products.

However, we also have the requirement "filling in required features as necessary to arrive at an indicate cost". With house styles and accessories associating with more than one products, the cost cannot be the price of one product. Maybe "indicative" just means rough or not inclusive...

[Prashant Purkar]

Thanks you guys for your inputs.

I guess shopping mall isn't a very good example of extension of a product.

Let’s say I have a design which is of twin bungalows and a separate indoor gym.

Now there is only one design for 3 different products together as a collection, with gym and house being extension of a product.

This is what I have interpreted of the BMD.

About the 3d modeling tool I am thinking to include it in the sequence
diagram as well just to be safer.

But would like to hear some ones practical experience on how to deal with a situation
where you have a another system to meet NFR but its out of use case diagram.

May be I am trying to save myself from extra work the 3d tool brings

Perhaps Wilmar Rodriguez can help us with this.


Thanks
Prashant

[Prashant Purkar]

Hi ,

I am dropping the Idea of xml and 3d stuff in sequence dia.

As william said SLSB or perhaps POJO is good to convey the deisgn.

Thanks
Prashant

[Victor-OE Cardona]

Hi

I think that the modeling tool definetly must not be in the sequence diagram because It's suppose that the system does just what the uses cases describes

[Victor-OE Cardona]

Hi,

About the accesories and styles what I think is that the they are part of the house and not part of a product. The product is the house. I still think that the completeddesign could be compose of more than one product and this flexibility is thinking in the future.

what do you think?

[Prashant Purkar]

I think the same

P

[rafael liu]

That's the way I understand the BDM, please comment:

House: the house, object.

Product: the house for sale, include price and stuff.

CompletedDesign: is the user interaction with the system. In this interaction he can build as many houses as he wants.

The 0..* ending of the 0..* - 1..* association between CompletedDesign and Product doesn't make sense for me. How can a house exist without a corresponding Product/CompletedDesign? I only see it possible if pre-built House exists, but the way I understand the Customer will build custom houses from Components in the Inventory and another Customer won't be able to select the same house (he can build a similar instance only). Even if there was the possibility of choosing pre-built Housers, there isn't a Use Case where it would be picked.

About your BDM, mine is practically the BDM in the assigment.. I read that only domain classes should be included but I'm thinking about including my Facades, DAOs, etc.. What are you guys doing?

[Victor-OE Cardona]

Hi,

There is a use case that says "Customer selects a house design", it means to me that the customer could select a house among many house designs in order to associate it with a completedesign, so that the product/house could exist without a completedesign as the BDM depicts.

Maybe the customer is associated with house, so that he/she could start with many house designs an he/she decides when to complete it each one.

What do you think ?

[rafael liu]

Victor, I do think "Customer selects a house design" is from their own "open" designs. He selects it and click conclude. From the phrase "customers to add a selected, valid component to their current house design" I understand that he has a lot of open designs and he "selects" one to be the current one, then add/change (can it be changed? there's no UC..) components. Then, from this point of view there wouldn't be pre-built models.

[Victor-OE Cardona]

rafael,

yes, I don't think there are pre-built models.
From that point of view "open" designs are not persisted, they are in user's session memory so that when the customer is adding a component to the house the component is not persisted, the component is just store in memory ? i think it wouldn't be flexible, because It would be mandatory that the user finish with a house design before he log out the application.

[rafael liu]

I thought about making them persistent. In the Complete House Design UC, there's a step "Customer changes status to completed.", so "open" design would be the same, only with different status.

[rafael liu]

"The Complete House Design use case allows the customer to validate and complete an end-to-end house design satisfying the constraints of the design system" which constraints would these be? From "stock inventory and management system that controls all inventory and valid combinations of inventory in the Factory Homes catalog." I see some guys understood that the system would validate a combination of components for the completed house, but don't think so as it says "combinations of inventory" (which actually i didn't understand, validtion for combination of components in stock?!?). Seems like we have to have a rule component that knows which combinations are OK.

what do you think?

[Victor-OE Cardona]

hi,

I think the Inventory System should validate the combinations of components of the design in order to complete it.

[rafael liu]

Victor, I came to agree with you. I don't think it's responsability of IS to validate combinations, but I read the assignment over and over again and it seems from that IS is really supposed to do it.

Another thing: what do you get from "filling in required features as necessary (heating, plumbing and so on) to arrive at an indicative cost."? It says the Customer should stablish a cost and the application should expend no more than this. If the Customer enters $1000, ok, we can do all the plumbing and heating, but what if he enters $50? Where should the application save money? Should we cut heating? Fill with a less expensive one? Use less plumbing? It seems this aspect was left to our imagination..

[Victor-OE Cardona]

hi,

what i understand about it is that the system validates the combination of components of the customer's design, then the system adds to the design the necessary features (plumbing, heating, etc) then the system gives to the customer a cost based on the customer's design and features required to the house.

[JJ Walker]

the validation of the valid combination of inventory should be from the Stock Inventory and Management System.

Regarding the relation between House, Product and CompletedDesign, I am thinking House is the outcome after customer add all the component to it; Product is after the required feature(heating, plumbing) is added to the house, (may) including deriving the cost; and CompletedDesign is after customer select 1 or more product to form a final design, which is ready to be discussed with Sales Rep.

What do you think?

[Victor-OE Cardona]

hi,


i think the cost should be related to the design not to the house.

[rafael liu]

It seems to me the Product should have the price (as it name says, it's a product..), CompletedDesign could have the total sum of its Products.

On the other side we schedule consultations searching "completed" CompletedDesign using the zip code. That way it seems the CompletedDesign should hold the zip code and the price (wouldn't make sense schedule a consultation for a CompletedDesign to discuss only one of it's Product's price). Maybe completedDesign is for cases where we want to build house complexes or condominiums, where we have lots of Houses but at the same place. Still Product is dispensable.. Inputs?

[Jose Luis Iturbide]

Hi

For me, the zip code is a property of Customer and due to CompletedDesign and Customer are associated you can easily do the seach. May be a sales representative searches completed designs using this criteria because each one cover a specific sales zone.

Regards

[William Taylor]

JJ Walker wrote:the validation of the valid combination of inventory should be from the Stock Inventory and Management System.

Regarding the relation between House, Product and CompletedDesign, I am thinking House is the outcome after customer add all the component to it; Product is after the required feature(heating, plumbing) is added to the house, (may) including deriving the cost; and CompletedDesign is after customer select 1 or more product to form a final design, which is ready to be discussed with Sales Rep.

What do you think?

My understanding is all components including the house itself are products of Factory Homes. The house is composed of other components like walls and foundation. In this way, a CompletedDesign can be associated with multiple products. Anyone share the same opinion? Thanks.

[pradip nehe]

William Taylor wrote:

JJ Walker wrote:the validation of the valid combination of inventory should be from the Stock Inventory and Management System.

Regarding the relation between House, Product and CompletedDesign, I am thinking House is the outcome after customer add all the component to it; Product is after the required feature(heating, plumbing) is added to the house, (may) including deriving the cost; and CompletedDesign is after customer select 1 or more product to form a final design, which is ready to be discussed with Sales Rep.

What do you think?

My understanding is all components including the house itself are products of Factory Homes. The house is composed of other components like walls and foundation. In this way, a CompletedDesign can be associated with multiple products. Anyone share the same opinion? Thanks.

do you thing house is a component ? I don't think so. component like wall, foundation belong to product.

I think single Room might be product and since house consist of mulitple rooms ( bed, living, outhouse,garage ,etc) , a CompleteDesign can be associated with multiple Product (rooms) .. does it make any sense?

[Prashant Purkar]

From the data model digram, house has components and is not a component.

Component can have many attributes like color, material, etc.. whereas house is just a combination of components.

Don't think of single room is product as a good idea, though room is also a combination of componets but the microscopic view does not bring any advantage to the design.


Regards
Prashant

[Mohammed Amine Tazi]

HI ALL, I'm confused about use cases. Do we have rights to add other use cases like "Customer Login" or "Sign up"? And how about refining and modifying the existing ones ?
Another question would be : How to fit the added components to the open design ? and how come the validation of components by the stock system is done after completion despite of after adding a new component?

[Victor-OE Cardona]

Hi,

No, you don't have to add new use cases and you can't modify the existing ones.

[Mohammed Amine Tazi]

Thanks for your reply and good luck.

[Mohammed Amine Tazi]

I want to know if we have to include the updated domain model in the assignment or just entities are sufficient in the class diagram ?

[Victor-OE Cardona]

just reflect in the class diagram

[Gautam Ssingh]

Assignment mentions that "company plans to launch this program with a limited number of valid combinations for house styles and accessroies"

Doesn't this imply that inventory system is aware about all fixed house styles and component which can be added to this particular house style.

My understanding is customer has to choose an existing house style and system should be able to construct a dwelling and add wall, aperture etc as per selected house style.

Once this house object is available, customer can start use case for select, adding components.

Please let me know if my understand is wrong.

Thanks
Gautam