4.

1 DATA FLOW DESCRIPTION

 DFD’s are versatile diagramming tools.

 With only four symbols you can use DFD’s are not as could as flow chart’s for depicting
the details of physical system.
 Flow chart’s are not very useful for depicting purely logical information flows.

Definition and symbols:

 There are two different standard sets of DFD’s symbols but each set consist of your
symbols, that represent the same things.
 Data stores, data flows, processes and source/sinks.

USES

1. Data flow

 A data flow can be best understood as data in motion, moving from one place in a
system to another.
 A data flow could represent a data on a customer order form or a pay roll check.
 A data flow could also represent the result of a query to a data base, the contents
of a printed report, or data on a data entry computer display form.
2. Data store

 A data store is data at rest.

 A data store may represent one of many different physical location for data.
 A data store might contain data about customers, students, customer order or
supplier invoices.
3. Process

 The process is the work or actions performed on data, so that they are
transformed, stored are distributed.
 When modeling the data processing of a system, it does not matter whether a
process is performed manually or by a computer.
 4. Source/sink

 A source/sink is origin and destination of the data.

 It is sometimes referred to as external entities because they are outside the system.

SYMBOLS FOR DFD:

1. Process

2. Data store

3. Source/sink

4 .Data flows

RULES GOVERNING DATA FLOW DIAGRAMMING:

1. Process:
  No process can have only o/p’s. It is making data from nothing. If an project has
only o/p’s then it must be a source.
 No process can have only i/p’s, if an object has only i/p’s then it must be sink.
 A process has a verb phrase label.
2. Data store:
 Data cannot move directly from one data store to another data store. Data must be
moved by a process.
 Data cannot move directly from an outside source to a data store. Data must be
moved by a process that receives data from the source and place the data into the
data store.
 Data cannot move directly to an outside sink from a data store. Data must be
moved by a process.
 A data store has a noun phrase label.
3. Source/sink:
 Data cannot move directly from a source to a sink.
 It must be moved by a process if the data are of any concern to our systems.
 Otherwise the data flow is not shown on the DFD.
4. Data flow:
 A data flow has only one direction of flow between symbols.
 It may flow in both direction between a process and a data store to show a read
before an output. The later is usually indicated however by two separate around
since these happen at different timer.
 A data flow cannot go directlyback to the same process, it leaves there must be at
least one other process that handles the data flow produces some other data flow
and returns the original data flow to the beginning processes.
 A data flow to a data store means update.
 A data flow from a data store means retrieve or use.