Week 11

Skipped week 10...

so many assignment still so many more to go...

this week User Interface Design...

it's forms, buttons & all the relevant input and output user needs to interact with to be able to complete the desired task. The inputs & outputs can be identified by context diagram, or other DFD diagrams in other levels. If the OO approach is being used in analysis trigger in the event table might be the source to identify the required input/output.

One of the characteristics of a well-designed user interface is not necessarily providing too mush information but enough & well-organized. user should be able to navigate through pages & find necessary information easily.

nobody can tell whether the interface is well-designed but the user. there some factors out of control of human which should be considered when designing the interface. these factors are called human factors.

form can be designed in windows or browser; but having browser form has the advantage of sharing one form for internal staff as well as consumer and suppliers

Week 9

Traditional design,

Design phase can be in two ways; traditional & OO the design you choose is in close collaboration with the analysis but doesn't mean if you have done OO analysis you can't move to traditional design. yet some parts don't match...

Traditional approach focuses on top-down approach decomposition of function to be performed by given program. what the user see when interacts with system is user interface, behind that interface thousands of programing code exists.

Consider system analysis & design book, it has many chapter & each chapter talks about one topic, on the other hand to understand some chapters you have to read previous chapters... this is exactly what happens in traditional design, the application software (the book) is divided into many modules (like chapters) and each module should perform one specific function which is referred to as cohesion, the more the function is specific & identifiable the more module is cohesive (highly cohesive). modules are connected to each other but what we are looking for is not strong relationship between modules. modules which are not heavily connected to each other are called loosely coupled. modules with high cohesiveness & less coupling are desired since codes are easy to find & locate and changing one module doesn't lead to chaos.

The models we use to represent traditional approach can be divided into 3 type: flowchart, structure chart & pseudo code.

Week 8

Moving to design,

everybody is so busy with assignment, so am I...that's why this week blog is posted this time

many things have to be considered when designing new system; one is from now on the assumption of the perfect technology is no longer valid so all the possibilities of failure should be considered & the system should be designed in a way that it can be up & running all the time (that's not written anywhere- that's what I'm guessing).

the design phase consists of many parts:
designing application architecture
designing the network
designing the system & user interface
designing the database

again the system can be designed in Traditional & OOA, each has its own diagrams. the most important thing in design phase is application development. the definitions should be clarified by end of this phase.

to avoid coding many times, or to avoid changing code in different places in the system, applications are made in 3 different interrelated but independent layers i.e. view layer, business logic & data layer.

Week 7

feel so exhausted, looking for a ounce of energy...

Just the week after semester break, i already submitted 2 assignments and have lots of assignments waiting to be served by bulter (me). I'm really freaked out, just wanna run,wanna escape....but here i stand like a man

every word i hear in the news, in newspaper, Internet...just remind me of assignments

i always knew goals should be hard but achievable but this hurricane of assignments looks unapproachable

this week in the lecture...

the last part of analysis before moving to design; most of the task in this part is somehow related to project manager...

defining system requirement, prioritizing the requirements, evaluating alternatives, creating RFP & reviewing the best alternative & recommendation with the management

choosing the best alternative is based on its feasibility like time, cost, technology, availability of experienced staff, organization's culture

alternatives might be in-house development, buying software package, turnkey system or facilities management.

the project manager also should define Application Deployment Environment, Application Development environment and related tools before moving to design.

if in-house development is not the selected alternative the project manager should create a legal document called Request For Proposal to identify and explain system's processing requirements (functional requirements) as well as technical requirements. and then evaluates the submitted the RFP to choose the one that meets organization's requirement and budget and time for contracting.

Week 6

In week 5 we studied Traditional Approach to modell "things" & "events"
For Things in the system we use ERD to represent data entities and their relation i.e. what kind of information is needed and structure of the information.

For Event modelling we use many kind of diagrams;
1.CONTEXT DIAGRAM: we use Context Diagram as a abstract model to show the entire system as one process and to outline system boundaries and external entities.
2.DATA FLOW DIAGRAM:we use DFD diagrams to decomposite system into further level for clarification. Using number of DFD decomposition and number of processes in each decomposition level depends on system complexity but as a rule it's recommanded to have 7±2 process in each decomposition level.
N.B. what happens in DFD and within the process have to be described to avoid misunderstanding; we use 3 way to describe the processes: Structured English (psedue code), Decision Table & Decision Trees.
Likewise, we have to clarify our definition for data (entities in ERD), we list all the attributes of each entity with data description elements (their type and maximum values allowed e.g. String, or Boolean ) all these information will be placed in Data Dictionary.
other useful diagrams are; data dependency diagram which is for exploring activities about one single process, Location Diagram which is proccessing locaton of system, Activity Location Marix which describes what processes is performed in which place and Activity-data matrix which shows enetities & their privillages to change data. This can be described by CRUD i.e. Create-Read-Update-Delete.
3.Activity Diagram is another kind of diagram which illustrates the flow of control and procedures in the system. this diagram is also used in OOA as well.

Part 2: OOA Modelling
There are different kind of digrams in this approach but the underlying concept is the same. All the "Things" & "Events'' should be modelled.
We use Class Diagram for modelling "Thins" with concepts like Abstract class, attributes and methods for objects.
just a quick recap; in OOA we have OBJECTS and the main focus is on process rather than data itself. onbjects are main part of system and they are communicating by sending message and responding to messages.
class diagram includes objects that are represented by classes, attributes, behaviour (methods), and using concepts like inheritance and UML notaion for multiplexity.

Events are being modelled in OOA by:
1. USE CASE DIAGRAM: which is almost equivalant for context digram in traditional approach. they are being used to represent Actors i.e. someone or something external to system bundaries or automated system, and system itself which can include one or many use case. Use-case diagram can be seen as equivalant to DFD in diferrent level when they represent subsystems.
Like we described the process of DFD, we have to describe the use-case here. this is achieved by developing USE CASE DETAILED DESCRIPTION which can be develop at three level; brief, intermediate and Fully developed description.
2. ACTIVITY DIAGRAM: as mentioned before this kind of diagram is used in both approaches to represent the procedure and order of use cases.
3. SYSTEM SEQUENCE DIAGRAM (SSD): is used to represent interaction between objects i.e. what is the detaill of message sent to an object and what the object returns in the response messsage.
4. STATE MACHINE DIAGRAM: is another diagram which is helpful for describing business rules

Week 5

Week five,
we learnt about modelling and using diagrams in traditional and OO approach, it was relatively easy.
Just something that confuses me a bit is Event tables, sometimes can't really understand the difference between activity & response. The difference between Event & Trigger is still blurry to me. maybe because we share the same name for them and it's a kinna redundancy.

I faced this problem when working on Tutorial exercise for the lift. at the end I think we have to use Class diagram and UML notation for connecting the classes to each other.
hope to write more in week 5. the topic was easy so nothing special to say.
Still haven't got what exactly IE is! gotta work on that more

Week 4

the reason why I posted this week's blog late was I was busy with another assignment I didn't have time to read the book. I wanted to read book and then write something.

this week's topic was about modelling. looks pretty straightforward. it also covered some issues about database which will be covered more in chapter 12 as the book said.

two important concept in modeling are:
1. events
2. things

in the studio we interviewed the tutor, nothing special...that might be a bit useful if he provided us with some general idea about assignment after finishing interview. (I'm not sure if he did or not cuz after finishing our own interview we left the room)
but the general discussion provide guidance with topics like where to start assignment.

Week 3

This week I started reading the text book in a different way. I started reading the text from the book while I have lecture notes in front of me. and tried to compare the lecture notes with the book and figure out which parts are more important and focus on those parts. this approach saved a lot of time and energy and at the end I realized I understood the idea better than last week.

Chapter 4 was about system analysis in detail and basically requirement gathering. the text was so general and provide some general idea about information gathering which heavily emphasized on communication skills.

the Studio was not really helpful, if we had some PowerPoint slides, or some transparency sheets that would help to understand better (even writing on the board would do).

We also formed groups for next week's Interview. But I really didn't understand why we formed group!!! As the tutorial sheet says just to conduct interview

Week 2, Part 2

I keep reading the prescribed book which I started reading from the first week, on the fist week and this week I spent a lot of time for reading Chapters 1, 2, 3.
I was not sure about my approach to reading this subject, I used to read the lecture notes first, then started reading book and try to summarize the important parts on a sheet of paper.
this approach took a lot of time and I didn't find it very useful and also I was not sure if I have to read and memorize all the thing in the book so I sent email to POD to find the appropriate approach. He replied that I should understand the text (this is the main aim) but memorizing some elements for each phase or other stuff would help to play around in the final exam and able me to express that I have great knowledge of this subject.

At Week 3, I will try another approach for Chapter 4

Week 2

This is second week, I still found subject very interesting. This week I learnt about 2 kind of approach and SDLC which was covered in FIT1001 - IT in Organizations in some ways.

Something I can't understand about this subject is the way we have to read the book. This subject looks very practical and I think we will do most of the thing like UML and...for assignment, we learn most of the things practically but how should read the text book in term of final exam are we supposed to memorize all the terms and definitions or we have to read it just to understand the concept...
I don't know when we are supposed to start our first assignment, I haven't started it yet but I'll probably try to at least read it by end of the week just to know if I can start working on that...I also plan to install the CASE-tool on my PC.

Week 1 Entry

Hi,
This is Siavash, I'm doing BITS, Information Management Major second semester.
I found this subject very interesting so far...if I'm right this subject is combination of different thing focuses on many issues like different technologies, different approaches to problems and how to solve it rather that just one topic (like programming that all you have to do is programming) that's why i like this subject and i hope it turns out as I predict...
I also heart about UML before and so in hurry to find out what kinna language it is, is it like SQL or something like Java or neither of them...