What is data-driven programming?

Question

I've been tasked at work to write a detailed engineering plan for a logistics application that we are coding to propose to a customer. I have been told that it is a data-driven application. What does it mean for an application to be "data-driven"? What is the opposite? I can't seem to get any really clear answer for this although while web searching I can see many people posting their own examples. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Data driven progamming is a programming model where the data itself controls the flow of the program and not the program logic. It is a model where you control the flow by offering different data sets to the program where the program logic is some generic form of flow or of state-changes.

For example if you have program that has four states: UP - DOWN - STOP - START

You can control this program by offering input (data) that represents the states:

• set1: DOWN - STOP - START - STOP - UP - STOP
• set2: UP - DOWN - UP - DOWN

The program code stays the same but data set (which is not of a dynamic input type but statically given to the computer) controls the flow.

Answer 2

Although there are more than a few ideas as to what data driven programming is, allow me to give an example using a data structure and a function.

Non data driven example:

data_lloyd = {'name': 'Lloyd', 'lives': 'Alcoy }
data_jason = {'name': 'Jason', 'lives': 'London' }
go = function(x) 
    if x.name == 'Lloyd' 
    then 
        print("Alcoy, Spain") 
    else 
        print("London, UK") 
end

Data driven example:

data_lloyd = {'name': 'Lloyd', 'lives': function(){ print("Alcoy, Spain") }
data_jason = {'name': 'Jason', 'lives': function(){ print("London, UK") }
go = function(x)
    x.lives()
end

In the first example the decision to show one result or the other is in the code logic. In the last example the output is determined by the data that is passed to the function and for that reason we say the output is 'driven' by the data.