WHAT'S NEW?

[November 29, 2004] This week's lecture notes are now available.

Instructor

• Professor Richard N. Taylor
  • Electronic Mail: taylor <at-sign> ics.uci.edu
  • Office: ICS2-203
  • Office Phone: (949) 824-6429
  • Hours: Monday and Wednesday: 11:00-12:00 pm. Please make appointments by email, however, in order to guarantee the meeting.
• Fax: (949) 824-1715
• Mailing Address:
  Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences,
  University of California, Irvine
  Irvine, California 92697-3425

Overview and Prerequisite Knowledge

From the UCI Catalog:

Introduction to the concepts, methods, and current practice of software engineering. The study of large-scale software production; software lifecycle models as an organizing structure; principles and techniques appropriate for each stage of production. Laboratory work involves a project illustrating these elements.

Prerequisite: ICS 23 with a grade of C or better.

In addition to the skills and concepts introduced in previous classes, students should have these computing skills when they enter the class (or learn them independently in the first week of the quarter):

• The use of a text editor (Word, etc.) to create documents.
• The use of a drawing package (Power Point, Visio, etc.) to create graphics for these documents.

The instructional objectives for the course are as follows:

• introduce you to the discipline of software engineering;
• experientially acquaint you with one version of the software lifecycle;
• provide working knowledge of at least one reasonable technique to be applied in each phase of the lifecycle;
• provide particular insight into software architecture, design by information hiding, and the problems of software analysis and testing.

Software Life Cycle

• Mastery:
  • Knowing different life cycles and their appropriateness in different situations
  • Knowing basic principles of software engineering (such as separation of concerns, modularity, and abstraction) and knowing how they apply throughout the software life cycle
• Proficiency:
  • Understanding tradeoffs and relationships among the various activities in the software life cycle
  • Understand the meaning and use of a set of basic software qualities

Requirements

• Mastery:
  • Interviewing a customer to elicit requirements
  • Writing a textual (non-formal) requirements document
• Proficiency:
  • Understand the structure of a requirements document and know the appropriate kinds of information in such a document

Architectural Design

• Mastery:
  • Know the differences among interaction patterns of a set of basic architectural styles
  • Understand the difference between architecture and module design
• Proficiency:
  • Choosing an appropriate architectural style for a particular problem

Module Design

• Mastery:
  • Using provided/exported and required/imported interfaces to define module boundaries
  • Identifying and defining modules in a design
  • Identifying and defining abstract data types in a design
• Proficiency:
  • Applying coupling, cohesion, fan-in, and fan-out
  • Creating USES and COMPRISES diagrams
• Exposure:
  • Creating a design for a nontrivial, sizable problem

Programming

• Mastery:
  • General rules of programming style and clarity (short rehash from earlier classes)
• Proficiency:
  • Mapping a module design onto an implementation in source code
• Exposure:
  • Using existing modules and libraries in an implementation
  • Coding under a heavy deadline (requiring tradeoffs between code quality and code functionality)

Testing

• Proficiency:
  • Testing a program for failures
  • Applying white-box testing on short pieces of code
  • Applying black-box testing on short pieces of code
• Exposure:
  • Understanding the many dimensions of software quality assurance
  • Understanding the inspection and code walk-through process

Textbooks

• Software Engineering, Principles and Practice , by Hans van Vliet. Second Edition. $75.00 new at the bookstore; $56.25 used. ISBN 0-471-97508-7
• The class notes will (usually) be available on the WWW after the class meeting in which they are used. Occasionally the notes will be available ahead of time, but they might be from the previous year's offerings, and thus minor differences may exist as compared to what's used in class this year.

Schedule (Subject to change)

Assignments and Assessment

Aggregate grade for the project: 45%.
Midterm: 20%.
Final: 35%

The project consists of four assignments. Their relative weighting (as a percentage of your final grade) is as follows:

Assignment	Weight
Requirements	10
Architecture and module interfaces Design Addendum Required Notation	18
Implementation	7
Testing	10

Specific assignments will be placed on the web, giving the assignment, the required format, and specific grading criteria.

Strictly speaking, we do not grade on a curve, meaning that we will not assert in advance that half of the class will receive grades at or below a C+, and half above that. Grading is done based on mastery of the material as exhibited in the exams and the project. If everyone masters the material very well, then everyone will get an A. On the other hand, if no one were to master the material at all adequately, then everyone would receive an F. But grades are adjusted to suit the difficulty of the exams and the assignments. If an exam turns out to be a real bear, then the threshold for an A will be much lower than for an exam that was piece of cake.

NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED, unless you have a legible excuse from a physician, an extreme family emergency, or unless you are willing to accept an extreme penalty with respect to your assignment's grade.

Teaching Assistant and Readers

• TA: Justin Erenkrantz
  • Office: ICS2-246. Note: this building is locked, so to gain entry you need to either make an appointment ahead of time (by email) or phone (824-2776)
  • Hours: MW 3:30 - 5:00
• Reader:
  • TBD

Keeping in Touch

Check this web site regularly. This is the definitive location for course information. Announcements concerning assignments will be made here. The course mailing list will also be used to make announcements, provide instructions, and so on. The course mailing list will be "read only" from the student's perspective. I.e. the instructor, TA, and readers can post messages to the list, but not students. If you ask one of us a question whose answer is relevant to the rest of the class, we'll post the appropriate material to the list.

An important note about email

Any email that you send in conjunction with this class must be sent from a UCI account. That is, if you want any response or action taken, then you must use your UCI account to send the email. Email from yahoo, hotmail, juno, cox, or any other non-UCI site will be ignored.

Computing

All computing will be done on the department's lab machines.

You may use another computer to produce the documents you turn in. (No handwritten assignments allowed).

All implementation work will be done in Java.

Please use the computing equipment for instructional purposes only. Also watch out on the social subtleties of electronic mail.

Disabilities

Any student who feels he or she may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss his or her specific needs. Also contact the Disability Services Center at (949) 824-7494 as soon as possible to better ensure that such accommodations are implementationed in a timely fashion.

Academic Dishonesty