User:LupusDei108/Interface Segregation Principle

The Interface-Segregation Principle is one of the 5 SOLID principles of Object Oriented Design in Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns and Practices. The ISP is similar to the High Cohesion Principle of GRASP. It is a software development principle used for clean development and is intended to help a developer from making his software impossible to change. If followed, the ISP will help a system stay decoupled and thus easier to refactor, change, and redeploy. The ISP says that once an interface has gotten too 'fat' it needs to be split into smaller and more specific interfaces so that any clients of the interface will only know about the methods that pertain to them. In a nut shell, no client should be forced to depend on methods it does not use.

The Importance in OOD

In any Object Oriented project, it is often necessary to use interfaces as layers of abstraction to provide, not only a greater conceptual explanation of the code, but also a barrier to prevent dependencies as described by The Dependency Inversion Principle.

According to the many software experts who have signed the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship, writing well crafted and explanatory software is almost as important as writing working software. Using interfaces to further describe the intent of the software is often a good idea.

It is also true that a system may become so coupled, where each class is dependent on other classes that depend on other classes, that it is no longer possible to make a change in one place without having a ripple effect and having to make subsequent changes in many places. This is why using an interface or an abstract class can be valuable in any Object Oriented software project.

The Origin

The ISP was first used and formulated by Robert C. Martin when he was doing some consulting for Xerox. Xerox had created a new printer system which could preform a variety of tasks such as stapling a set of printed papers, faxing, and so forth. The software for this system was created from the ground up and performed its tasks successfully, but as the software grew it became harder and harder to change. Each time a change, even the smallest of changes, was made it could take nearly an hour to recompile and redeploy. This was making it near impossible to continue development, so they hired Robert to help them out.

The issue with their code was that there was one main Job class that was used by almost all of the tasks. Anytime a print job or a stapling had to be done, a call was made to some method in the Job class. This meant that the Job class was getting huge or 'fat', full of tons of different methods which were specific to a variety of different clients. This meant that a staple job would know about all the methods of the print job, even though the staple class had no use for them. The clients were being forced to depend on methods they did not use. When a developer had to change a small detail about a print job, every one of the classes that used the Job class would have to be recompiled.

The solution suggested by Robert has now become the Interface Segregation Principle. He suggested that they add a layer of interfaces to sit between the Job class and all of its clients. Using the properties of the Dependency Inversion Principle, all of the dependencies could be reversed. Instead of having just one 'fat' Job class that all the tasks used, there would be a Staple Job interface or a Print Job interface that would be used by the Staple class or Print class, respectively, and would call methods of the Job class. Ergo, there was an interface created for each job, and the Job class would inherit from all of these interfaces. This segregation of interfaces vastly decoupled the software allowing the clients like the Staple class to only depend on the methods it cared about. Thus if a developer made a change to the Print Job, the Staple Job would be unaffected and have no need to recompile.

This information was acquired in a personal interview with Robert C. Martin on October 31, 2009.

The Purpose

What is the problem with having a 'fat' interface? Or perhaps, what is the problem with including methods that aren't used but never get in the way? The problem is that they will get in the way. Anytime you wish to change your obese interfaces, or classes, and the methods that appease its gluttony, you will likely have to change or recompile all the clients of that interface, even if they are unrelated. That's like being the coach (the interface) of a football team (the clients) and having one particularly undisciplined player (the client that should probably have its own interface). This player is constantly causing trouble (has extra, and unrelated behavior), and as a result every time this player disrupts practice (the unrelated behavior grows, or you need to change the name of one of its methods) you make the entire team do mountain climbers (all other clients have to change or recompile). Not only does this slow down practice (development), but it also makes all the other players tired (over cumbersome with unneeded methods) and thus less productive and capable to continue with practice (harder to read and understand the code, thus making it harder to continue development). Then you realize this kid is more of a wrestler than a football player, so you introduce him to the wrestling coach and tell him to get ready for winter (a segregated interface!).

Typical Violation

The Xerox example is a clear violation of the Interface Segregation Principle, but not all violations are so clear cut. A more commonly known example is the ATM Transaction example given in Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices and in an article also written by Uncle Bob specifically about the ISP. This example talks about an interface for the User Interface for an ATM, that handles all requests such as a deposit request, or a withdrawal request, and how this interface needs to be segregated into individual and more specific interfaces.

External links

• Principles Of OOD - Description and links to detailed articles on SOLID.

• Object Oriented Design Quality Metrics: an analysis of dependencies Robert C. Martin, C++ Report, Sept/Oct 1995

Category:Software design Category:Object-oriented programming