Rounding Out Our Application, Part 1: Adding File Persistence

Abstract

In Chapter 14, we built our first version of the Student Registration System (SRS) as a command line-driven application that focused on the domain classes called out by our model: Person, Professor, Student, Course, Section, ScheduleOfClasses, Transcript, and TranscriptEntry. The Main method of the SRS driver class was written simply to instantiate objects of the various types and to put them through their paces, as a means of testing that we’ve implemented the logic of their methods correctly. But, the SRS application as written isn’t useful as an industrial-strength application yet because

• It uses string and numerical literals declared in the Main method of the driver code to initialize all of its objects/data.

• It provides no means of saving the state of the objects from one invocation of the application to the next-a process known as persisting data.

• Most industrial-strength information systems requiring significant user interaction rely on a graphical user interface (GUI) for such interaction.