Jackson structured programming, or JSP, is a method of structured programming. It attempts to relate the input and output to the way it must be processed. It will produce a diagram for both the input and the output. However normally it is the input which is considered. Using a diagram to help structure your programming is essential when trying to produce reusable and maintainable code. The JSP method attempts to break the structure into easily executed steps. The main components to produce the diagram are-

  1. Fundamental operations
  2. Sequences
  3. Iterations
  4. Selections

As you can see we have met most of these terms before. What the rest of this section will look at is how the diagrams can be used, how they are structured and also sample code to demonstrate the end result.