How data flow can improve application development productivity
by W. P. Stevens
This paper presents the technique of data flow and how it can substantially improve application development productivity. Flows of data are the only connections needed between functional components of a computer program. Components which pass only data are so independent that they can easily be shared and reused. Such components can be developed independently, which substantially reduces the complexity of development and makes them much easier and faster to design, implement, test, and change. Building programs in this way can yield substantial increases in productivity over developing monolithic programs or even structures of called modules. The compatibility of data flow to natural human views of applications and other parts of data processing, such as distributed processing and high-performance architectures, is also presented. Recommendations are included.
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