An interface control document ( ICD ) in systems engineering and software engineering , provides a record of all interface information (such as drawings, diagrams, tables, and textual information) generated for a project. The underlying interface documents provide the details and describe the interface or interfaces between subsystems or to a system or subsystem .
9-445: An ICD is the umbrella document over the system interfaces; examples of what these interface specifications should describe include: The purpose of the ICD is to control and maintain a record of system interface information for a given project. This includes all possible inputs to and all potential outputs from a system for some potential or actual user of the system. The internal interfaces of
18-422: A system or subsystem are documented in their respective interface requirements specifications, while human-machine interfaces might be in a system design document (such as a software design document ). Interface control documents are a key element of systems engineering as they control the documented interface(s) of a system, as well as specify a set of interface versions that work together , and thereby bound
27-484: A system that does not break when the other system changes its business rules and logic. (Provision for limits or sanity checking should be pointedly avoided in an interface requirements specification.) Thus, good modularity and abstraction leading to easy maintenance and extensibility are achieved. System design The basic study of system design is the understanding of component parts and their subsequent interaction with one another. Systems design has appeared in
36-431: A variety of fields, including sustainability, computer/software architecture, and sociology. If the broader topic of product development "blends the perspective of marketing, design, and manufacturing into a single approach to product development," then design is the act of taking the marketing information and creating the design of the product to be manufactured. Thus in product development, systems design involves
45-471: The characteristics of the systems which use it to connect. The function and logic of those systems should be described in their own requirements and design documents as needed. In this way, independent teams can develop the connecting systems which use the interface specified, without regard to how other systems will react to data and signals which are sent over the interface. For example, the ICD and associated interface documentation must include information about
54-436: The process of defining and developing systems, such as interfaces and data , for an electronic control system to satisfy specified requirements . Systems design could be seen as the application of systems theory to product development . There is some overlap with the disciplines of systems analysis , systems architecture and systems engineering . The physical design relates to the actual input and output processes of
63-429: The requirements. An application programming interface is a form of interface for a software system, in that it describes how to access the functions and services provided by a system via an interface. If a system producer wants others to be able to use the system, an ICD and interface specs (or their equivalent) is a worthwhile investment. An ICD should only describe the detailed interface documentation itself, and not
72-417: The size, format, and what is measured by the data, but not any ultimate meaning of the data in its intended use by any user. An adequately defined interface will allow one team to test its implementation of the interface by simulating the opposing side with a simple communications simulator. Not knowing the business logic of the system on the far side of an interface makes it more likely that one will develop
81-561: The system. This is explained in terms of how data is input into a system, how it is verified/authenticated, how it is processed, and how it is displayed. In physical design, the following requirements about the system are decided. Put another way, the physical portion of system design can generally be broken down into three sub-tasks: Online websites, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix are used by millions of users worldwide. A scalable, highly available system must be designed to accommodate an increasing number of users. Here are
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