System Integration

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Horizontal Partitioning

One way of partitioning a system, at design time, is to split it up horizontally (as oppose to vertically), or, put another way, split it up into layers.

 

Physically a system is made up of sub-systems, these sub-systems are physical entities. 

 

When you bring a series of physical sub-systems together they will have requirements in common, the basics, e.g. they will all need a boot process, a management system, a communication system, etc.

 

To save time you could think of all the sub-systems as one, you could then have software that thought of the sub-systems as one.  You would have one boot process, one communication system, one management system etc; the different physical entities would be, in a manner, one software system. 

 

If the different sub-systems were physically the same, e.g. the same physical design, you could design one set of software and load it onto each sub-system, this would save time.

With horizontal partitioning thought is given to the whole at design time.  It could be that one process is designed that connects all the sub-units and treats them as one or the same software is loaded onto each sub-system.

 

The horizontal division of a system leads to ‘layers’.