SADT (acronym for Structured Analysis and Design Technique) is a methodology for structural analysis and design.

SADT (acronym for Structured Analysis and Design Technique ) is a methodology for structural analysis and design that integrates the modeling process, project configuration management, use of additional language tools, and project management with its own graphical language. The modeling process can be divided into several stages: interviewing experts, creating diagrams and models, distributing documentation, assessing the adequacy of models and adopting them for further use. This process is well established, because when developing a project, specialists perform specific duties, and the librarian ensures timely information exchange.

SADT emerged in the late 60s during the revolution caused by structural programming. When the majority of specialists struggled to create software, few tried to solve the more difficult task of creating large-scale systems, including both people and machines, and software similar to those used in telephony, industry, control and arms control. At that time, specialists traditionally engaged in the creation of large-scale systems began to realize the need for greater orderliness. Thus, the developers decided to formalize the process of creating the system, breaking it into the following phases:

• Analysis - determining what the system will do
• Design - the definition of subsystems and their interaction,
• Implementation - the development of subsystems separately, the union - the connection of subsystems into a single whole,
• Testing - testing the system,
• Installation - system commissioning,
• Operation - use of the system.

Story

Part of the theories relating to the methodology and language of the description of systems, were named by their author, Douglas T. Ross "Methodology of structural analysis and design" (SADT - Structural Analysis and Design Technique). The initial work on SADT began in 1969. Its first major application was implemented in 1973 when developing a large aerospace project, when it was somewhat revised by SofTech, Inc. employees. In 1974, SADT was further improved and transferred to one of the largest European telephone companies. The appearance of SADT on the market occurred in 1975 after a one-year clearance in the form of a product. By 1981, SADT had already used more than 50 companies with more than 200 projects that included more than 2,000 people and covered a dozen problem areas, including telephone networks, aerospace production, management and control, inventory control and data processing. . Its wide distribution in the European, Far Eastern and American aerospace industries (called IDEF0) now allows these figures to be significantly increased. Thus, SADT stands out among modern methodologies for describing systems due to its widespread use.

In the early 1970s, the SADT methodology was implemented in the form of a clear formal procedure. In the course of this implementation, SADT analysts used chart forms and title pages. A unique and effective method of coding links between decompositions using ICOM codes used in SADT, as well as the method of organizing peer review using the author / reader cycle, makes it much easier to implement a paper implementation. Thanks to these advantages, SADT far surpasses all other structural analysis methods that have a paper implementation.

In the late 1970s, computers of sufficient power and range appeared with an acceptable speed of creating graphic images. This made it possible to automate those structural methods that, like SADT, relied heavily on graphics. Although such technologies were just beginning to develop at the time, the US Air Force financed the development of the first SADT automation system (and, by the way, the first automated structural analysis tool that focuses on graphics) called AUTOIDEF0.

In the early 1980s, a personal computer with graphic capabilities appeared on the desk. This led to the creation of automated workstations for several graphical structural analysis methods. At the same time, the first attempts to implement SADT on mini- and microcomputers were undertaken in the USA, Europe and Scandinavia. One of the results of such attempts was the creation of the SADT workstation in France, called SPECIF X.

The current level of information technology provides a rich selection of methods for creating automated support for SADT. The most affordable SADT tool today is Design / IDEF (Meta Software Corp.) - originally built as part of an integrated computerization program for production and now widely used in various areas of activity. Automated support for SADT occurs in development from a simple graphical tool to software that functions on the basis of knowledge of more general modeling concepts. Such advanced tools have the ability to understand the semantics of an interconnected network of SADT diagrams and a multitude of models, and also to combine this set of information and rules with other technologies.