What is the interface management document?
The interface control document (ICD) is a formalized description of methods and structures involved in the provision of input and receiving output from a particular system. The system described in the interface control document can be a software library or a piece of hardware. The document does not have to follow any individual format, but it can be a collection of paragraphs, graphs or even technical drawings of the interface hardware. In specific reference to the software, the interface control document may resemble and an abstract programming interface (API) that describes public methods or functions that can be used to enter information into the library and also describes the output that will result. The interface control document generally describes how to integrate the system into a larger system or connect it to a parallel system; It does not describe any of the internal functioning of the system, which could be given in a separate type of document.
The purpose of the interface management document is to provide hardware or software developersSome documentation that can be used in creating a system or software that transmits data to and from the system that ICD describes. This usually means defining accurate functions or hardware components so that their signatures are known and the tolerance of parameters for use is indicated. In software engineering, this can mean knowledge of the name of a specific function, what type of variables is accepted as parameters and possibly, what function limits are placed on the values passed. For a piece of hardware, this information may include what features are serial connector control pins, any hardware interruption and device working speed.
One thing that the interface control document specifically does not describe, is how the system translates the input of the INTO output or how the output is produced in general. This allows developers to create a close -focused view of the system, but also requires system developers to strictly follow the instructions in the document itself to strictly follow the ICD details. Car comfortRY Document for controlling the interface and system developers consists in the fact that the internal implementation of the system is not described in the document and can therefore be freely changed without affecting the external development of the ICD interface.
In some situations, the interface control document may allow system testing without the need to use the completed interface. This can be done by simulating different types of output that the system can generate as described in the ICD, and then this output goes through an externally developed interface. Systems that are only interested in handling one side of the system - for example, in the case of hardware, such as imaging device -can ensure that the interface works within specifications without required to input in the real world.