COM 1205: Software Design and Development
Winter 2000

[Administrivia |Outline ]

Administrivia

Instructor: William D Clinger
Home page: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/com1205/index.html
Directory: /course/com1205
Newsgroup: ccs.courses.com1205

Textbook: Schach, Classical and Object-oriented Software Engineering with UML and Java, Fourth Edition.

Catalog description: COM 1205 Software Design and Development 4 QH
Presents the latest ideas and techniques in software methodology and provides a means for students to apply these techniques. Students, working in groups, will be expected to design, implement, test, and document a large software project.
Prerequisites: COM 1201, COM 1204.

Contrary to the catalog description, this course will emphasize old ideas and proven techniques for software development. Students, working in small groups, will specify, design, implement, test, modify, and extend a small software project under circumstances that are intended to simulate the extended lifetime of a large software project.

The software project will be broken down into several assignments. In addition to these assignments, one midterm and one final examination will be given. Approximately 45 per cent of the final grade will be determined by the exams, and the other 55 per cent by the assignments.

This is not a course in software engineering, primarily because we will avoid most of the management issues. Software engineering does, however, provide the context for our discussion of the more technical aspects of software quality.

Security is an important aspect of software development. In this course, students are expected to protect the software they develop from plagiarists and thieves. The quality of this protection will be graded.

Outline

• Software
  • Tests
  • Requirements
  • Specifications
  • Designs
  • Code
• Software process models
  • Waterfall
  • Prototyping
  • Spiral
• Formal specifications
  • Context-free grammars
  • Type signatures
  • Algebraic specifications
  • Objects with mutable state
  • Partial correctness assertions
• Reuse
  • Declarative programming
  • Garbage collection
  • Abstract data types
  • Parametric polymorphism
  • Inheritance
• Modularity and Abstraction
  • Interfaces
  • Interchangeability
  • Representation independence
  • Information hiding
  • Encapsulation
• Measures of software quality
  • Correctness
  • Reliability
  • Robustness
  • Maintainability
  • Testability
  • Reusability
  • Utility
  • Performance
• Contributors to software quality
  • Simplicity
  • Standard components
  • Formal specifications
  • Correctness proofs
  • Assertion checking
  • Technical reviews
  • Testing
• Testing
  • Purpose of testing
  • Unit
  • Integration
  • Regression
  • Black-box
  • Glass-box
  • Boundary and stress tests
  • Coverage

Last updated 6 January 2000.