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Cork Institute of Technology
Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Software Development – Award
(KSDEV_8_Y4)
Autumn 2008
Software Engineering 1I
(Time: 3 Hours)
Answer five questions. Examiner: Mr. J. O’Brien Answer Question 1 and four other questions. Dr. M. O’Cinneide All questions carry equal marks. Mr. M. Donnelly
Q1. (a) Write a brief note on each of the following “commandments” of formal methods as compiled by Bowen and Hinchley, 1995 :
(i) Thou shalt formalise but not over-formalise. (i) Thou shalt not abandon thy traditional development methods. [4 Marks]
(b) A car park has parking spaces, each of which can be used to park a car. A company has a group of employees. Some people own cars.
Consider the following: [PLACE] set of all uniquely identifiable parking places. [CAR] set of all uniquely identifiable cars. [PERSON] set of all uniquely identifiable persons.
parked : PLACE CAR
employees : PERSON
owns : PERSON CAR
Describe the following: (i) The cars that are parked. (ii) The people who own the parked cars. (iii) The places that are occupied. (iv) Each employee owns a car. [4 Marks]
(c) The air-traffic control of an airport keeps a record of the planes waiting to land and the assignment of planes to gates on the ground. There are operations to accept a plane when it arrives in the airport’s waiting space, to assign a plane to a gate at the airport and to record that a plane leaves its gate.
Consider the following types:
[PLANE] the set of all possible, uniquely identified planes [GATE] the set of all gates at this airport.
The state of the airport , at any time, can be expressed by the following Z schema:
______Airport________________________________ | | waiting : PLANE | assignment : GATE PLANE |____________________________________________ | | waiting ∩ ran assignment = {} |____________________________________________
Each plane is assigned to at most one gate and each gate has at most one plane assigned to it. No plane is both waiting and assigned to a gate.
Initially, there are no planes waiting or at any gate. Therefore:
_______Init___________________________ | | Airport’ |___________________________________ | waiting’ = {} | assignment’ = {} |___________________________________
(i) Write a Z schema, called Arrive , that records the arrival of plane p in the airport’s waiting area. The plane must be neither already waiting nor assigned to a gate (ii) Write a Z schema, called Assign , that records the assignment of plane p to a free gate g. The plane must be waiting and the gate must be free. (iii) Write a Z schema, called Leave , that records plane p leaving its gate. The plane p must be assigned to the gate. The waiting planes are unaffected. [12 Marks]
(d) Component-level design metrics focus on internal characteristics of software components; these include module cohesion, coupling, and complexity. Such “white-box” metrics require knowledge of the inner working of a module. Dhama, 1995 , proposed a metric for module coupling that encompasses data- and control-flow, global coupling and environment coupling. Elaborate on Dhama’s module coupling metric. [5 Marks]
Q5. (a) Good system engineering begins with a clear understanding of the context , also known as the world view , and progressively narrows the focus until the technical detail is understood. Discuss. [6 Marks]
(b) System engineering is necessary when taking a global view of an organisation’s IT needs. Business process engineering, BPE, is one approach for creating an overall plan for implementing an organisation’s computing architecture. Elaborate on each of the following architectures that needs to be analysed and designed within the context of an organisation’s objectives and goals: (i) Data architecture. (ii) Application architecture. (iii) Technology architecture. [6 marks]
(c) Re-engineering takes time. It costs significant amounts of money. It absorbs resources that could be used to address other issues. Re-engineering is, typically, not achieved in a number of months; rather, it is likely to absorb IT resources for years. Therefore, every organisation needs a pragmatic strategy for software re- engineering. Discuss. [8 Marks]
Q6. (a) It is claimed that most software engineering standards are ad hoc recordings of individual practices claimed to be “best”. Given that the aforementioned statement is true, what is the impact of this on potential adopters of such standards? [3 Marks]
(b) In the context of software engineering standards: (i) What does the acronym ANSI stand for? (ii) Elaborate on the role played by ANSI in the world of standards applicable to software development. [7 Marks]
(c) i. What is/are the purpose(s) of IEEE/EIA Std. 12207, as determined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, IEEE, and Electronics Industry Association, EIA? ii. The concepts underlying IEEE/EIA Std. 12207 may be classified into general concepts and task-related concepts. Explain, briefly, these concepts. [10 Marks]
End of Exam!
