Separation of concerns in Software Engineering - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Separation of Concerns in Software Design

📖 Scenario: You are designing a simple software system for a library. The system needs to manage books, handle user interactions, and store data.To keep the system easy to maintain and understand, you will apply the principle of Separation of Concerns. This means dividing the system into parts where each part has a clear and separate responsibility.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple model that shows how to separate concerns by creating three parts: one for managing book data, one for user interaction, and one for data storage.This will help you understand how to organize software so each part does its own job without mixing responsibilities.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a data structure to hold book information

Create a variable to represent the user interface type

Write a function that handles book data management

Add a final step that connects all parts logically

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Separating concerns helps developers build software that is easier to maintain, test, and update by keeping different parts independent.

💼 Career

Understanding separation of concerns is essential for software engineers to write clean, modular code and collaborate effectively in teams.

1

Create the Book Data Structure

Create a dictionary called books with these exact entries: '1984': 'George Orwell', 'To Kill a Mockingbird': 'Harper Lee', and 'The Great Gatsby': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'.

Software Engineering

# Create the books dictionary with the given entries
# Your code here

Hint

Use a Python dictionary with book titles as keys and authors as values.

2

Set the User Interface Type

Create a variable called user_interface and set it to the string 'console' to represent the type of user interface.

Software Engineering

books = {
    '1984': 'George Orwell',
    'To Kill a Mockingbird': 'Harper Lee',
    'The Great Gatsby': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'
}
# Set the user_interface variable to 'console'
# Your code here

Hint

Assign the string 'console' to the variable user_interface.

3

Write the Book Management Function

Define a function called manage_books that takes no arguments and returns the books dictionary.

Software Engineering

books = {
    '1984': 'George Orwell',
    'To Kill a Mockingbird': 'Harper Lee',
    'The Great Gatsby': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'
}
user_interface = 'console'
# Define the manage_books function that returns books
# Your code here

Hint

Define a function with no parameters that returns the books dictionary.

4

Connect the Parts Logically

Create a variable called system_components that is a dictionary with keys 'data', 'interface', and 'logic'. Assign books to 'data', user_interface to 'interface', and the function manage_books to 'logic'.

Software Engineering

books = {
    '1984': 'George Orwell',
    'To Kill a Mockingbird': 'Harper Lee',
    'The Great Gatsby': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'
}
user_interface = 'console'

def manage_books():
    return books

# Create system_components dictionary connecting data, interface, and logic
# Your code here

Hint

Create a dictionary linking the three parts by their names and variables.