Design by Contract is a general approach to software design that dramatically improves the quality of the resulting products. This book provides an example-based approach to learning the powerful concept of Design by Contract.

"This book introduces the fundamentals of software contracts and illustrates how Design by Contract contributes to the optimal use of design patterns in a quality-oriented software engineering process. The Design by Contract approach to software construction provides a methodological guideline for building systems that are robust, modular, and simple." "Readers will find value in the book's overview of the Object Constraint Language, a precise modeling language that allows Design by Contract to be used with the industry standard Unified Modeling Language (UML). Although written in Eiffel, this book makes an excellent companion for developers who are using languages such as Java and UML. Throughout the book the authors discuss specific implementation issues and provide complete, ready-to-be-compiled examples of the use of each pattern." "They introduce design patterns and Design by Contract in the context of software engineering, and show how these tools are used to guide and document system design."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved