Orthogonality
= Orthogonality =Orthogonality is a system design property which enables the making of complex designs feasible and compact. The aim of an orthogonal design is to achieve that operations within one of its components do not create nor propagate side-effects to other components. For example a car has orthogonal components and controls, e.g. accelerating the vehicle does not influence anything else but the components involved in the acceleration. It would be a non orthogonal design were for example the acceleration to influence the radio tunning, or the display of time.
Orthogonality achieves that modifying the technical effect produced by a component of a system does not create or propagate side effects to other components of the system. The emergent behaviour of a system consisting of components should be controlled strictly by formal definitions of its logic and not by side effects resulting from poor integration, i.e. non-orthogonal design of modules and interfaces. Orthogonality reduces the test and development time, because it's easier to verify designs that that neither cause side effects nor depend on them.
