Supplementary Reading
‘An Introduction to Functional Decomposition
‘You should also zead the more extensive notes ox Functional Decomposition in the
-Eurupean Informatics Students Series, "Intoduction to Software Engineering in
Pascal", which you will be given.
‘Functional Decomposition isthe method we use inthe Electrical Engineering School
ta describe ant wnte down a software algorithm (Le. the recipe for proviling a
‘funesion in software) in a sysiematie way. Once the Functional Decomposition hes
been Gone, you Will see that translating i into programming language is quite easy.
Functional decomposition uses the idea of breaking down (hence the word
decomposition) an algorithm into smaller and therefore more manageable pieces.
‘This is the engineesing principle of modular decomposition caked about in Bishop
and Bishop, This breaking dowa of « prablern into smalles, more manageable ones,
‘works over several levels, “The whole task is broken down into sul-tnsks. These sub-
{asks are themselves broken down in subssub-tasks, and 50 on until we get ro small