HOOD is a detailed software design method. It is based on hierarchical decomposition

Decomposition

Decomposition is the process by which organic material is broken down into simpler forms of matter. The process is essential for recycling the finite matter that occupies physical space in the biome. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death...

 of a software problem. It comprises textual and graphical representations of the design.

HOOD was initially created for the European Space Agency

European Space Agency

The European Space Agency , established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 18 member states...

 and is used in such varied domains as aerospace (Eurofighter Typhoon

Eurofighter Typhoon

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a twin-engine, canard-delta wing, multirole combat aircraft, designed and built by a consortium of three companies: EADS, Alenia Aeronautica and BAE Systems; working through a holding company, Eurofighter GmbH, which was formed in 1986...

), ground transportation, and nuclear plants.

HOOD main target languages are Ada

Ada (programming language)

Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, wide-spectrum, and object-oriented high-level computer programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages...

, Fortran

Fortran

Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...

 and C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

.

External links

• Introduction to HOOD HOOD page at ESA
• [ftp://ftp.estec.esa.nl/pub/wm/wme/Web/HUM.ps.gz ESA's HOOD user manual], gezipped postscript