Before everything became "enterprise", there was a time, when everything was "structured". About 20 years ago structured analysis and structured design (SADT), together with CASE tools promised salvation to many IT proferssionals.
While the hype back then - like any other hype - came and went, I am amazed to see virtually no traces of SADT anymore. And actually I believe it wasn't that bad to deserve such a fate. What I particularly like, it that it emphasises the functional aspects of a system, i.e. you will gain a clear understanding what a system produces (you cannot specify write-only systems with SADT), a paradigm which is also ubiqitous in functional programming.
My questions are:
- what is the modern equivalent of SADT?
- Is there an UML drawing style (other than the context diagram) offering a similar level of abstraction and comparable possibilities of refinement.
- Do you know why the world abandoned SADT?
- Are you aware of any CASE tools which allow doing SADT, and which go beyond mere drawing tools and e.g. allow hierarchical diagrams whith consistency checking
I worked with SADT for a new weather satellite using C++. I found its description of the functional aspects (as was stated in the question) of an algorithm very valuable. Try search term: "GOES-R SADT" to find: http://www.goes-r.gov/downloads/GUC-7/poster-sessions/4-06_Ivan_Pathfinder.pdf and https://ams.confex.com/ams/91Annual/webprogram/Manuscript/Paper184496/SADT-UML-Extended-Abstract%28Submitted-20110223%29.pdf