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.