CR: COMP 3004 Learning Objectives

Calendar Description

Theory and development of software systems. This course will discuss computer ethics. Possible topics include: software development processes, requirement specification, class and scenario modeling, state modeling, UML, design patterns, traceability. Students are to complete a team project using a CASE tool.

Assumed Background

• Practical experience with rudimentary software design techniques
  • able to take an assignment description and identify the objects that are required
  • able to apply concepts of encapsulation to organize the required objects
  • able to identify opportunities for code reuse and implement them
  • able to apply advanced object-oriented programming concepts, including polymorphism and generic programming

• Practical experience in designing, implementing, testing and documenting small to medium size object-oriented programming assignments

Learning Objectives

• Understand the theory of large scale software system development
  • recognize the need for using a formal development process
  • learn the phases of software development life cycle (requirements elicitation, analysis, high-level design, detailed design, implementation, testing)
  • learn basics of project management

• Gain the practical experience to:
  • analyze a problem description for a large system
  • apply each phase of the software development life cycle
  • produce quality output for each phase

• Prepare for a career as a software development professional:
  • develop tools and strategies for working as a member of a team
  • practice formal presentation of work to peers
  • produce professional documentation
  • understand the Software Engineering Code of Ethics; learn to identify and analyze ethical dilemmas in a systematic fashion

Topics

Software Development Life Cycle

• Requirements elicitation
  • able to extract functional and non-functional requirements from a problem description
  • able to construct corresponding functional model, with UML use cases and scenarios
  • able to incorporate traceability into every work product

• Analysis
  • able to identify high level objects and categorize them into entity, boundary and control objects
  • able to construct corresponding object model, including associations (inheritance, aggregation), dependencies and multiplicity, with UML class diagrams
  • able to construct a dynamic model based on functional requirements, with UML sequence diagrams, state machines and/or activity diagrams

• High-level system design
  • understand different types of architectural styles (repository, client/server, peer-to-peer, MVC)
  • able to break down analysis object model into subsystems, with UML component diagrams
  • able to identify subsystem services and interfaces

• Detailed object design
  • understand the need for code reuse
  • understand major design patterns
  • able to construct detailed object model

• Implementation
  • understand strategies for mapping models to code and to persistent storage

• Testing
  • unit testing:
    • be able to create test cases for blackbox and whitebox testing
  • integration testing:
    • be able to select a testing integration strategy (top-down, bottom-up, sandwich)
    • be able to create test cases using stubs and drivers
  • system testing:
    • be able to create test cases based on the functional model

Software Management

• understand basic project management issues, including team organization and risk management

• understand the need for software management processes and tools, including:
  • configuration management
  • version management
  • system building
  • release management

• understand the different software development life cycle models (waterfall, V-model, spiral, Unified Software Development Process)

Professional Ethics

• be familiar with the principles of the ACM Software Engineering Code of Ethics
• be able to use a systematic process to analyze ethical dilemmas, determine possible courses of action, and select the most ethical course of action