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Non-functional vs functional

April 25, 2012 mgroves 0 Comments
Tags: architecture

AOP is best used for cross-cutting concerns, which are often non-functional requirements. But what's the difference between functional requirements and non-functional requirements?

A functional requirement is a requirement about what an application should do. This is manifested in a form that the user can easily observe. Business rules, UI logic, etc.

A non-functional requirement is a requirement about how an application should work. This is stuff that a user typically doesn't see (and probably doesn't care about). Logging, caching, threading, etc.

So here's a quick exercise for you:

Which of these are functional and which are non-functional? Why?

  1. Addresses should be US-only, ZIP Codes must be five digits
  2. Every method call should log its own name and arguments to a text file.
  3. When returning a list of Customers, only Customers the current user is authorized to see should be returned.
  4. When submitting a new Customer, it must be put in a pending queue for approval by an administrator.

I'll post my answers in a later post, but feel free to leave your answers in a comment.

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Matthew D. Groves

About the Author

Matthew D. Groves lives in Central Ohio. He works remotely, loves to code, and is a Microsoft MVP.

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