CSCI 362

15.10. The reuse of software raises a number of copyright and intellectual property issues. If a customer pays a software contractor to develop a system, who has the right to reuse the developed code? Does the software contractor have the right to use that code as a basis for a generic component? What payment mechanisms might be used to reimburse providers of reusable components? Discuss these issues and other ethical issues associated with the reuse of software. Business Ethics(in software) The ethical reuse of software is an interesting topic that made me think about other industries and how they develop new products or technologies and how that related to software development. I think one of the first issues to tackle is the legal aspect of the situation. If a company contracts the services of a software contractor and in the terms explicitly forbids the reuse of the software they develop while working on their project then the contractor is obligated to perform their services i...

I can recall early on in my computer science college education being told about the importance of testing. Oddly enough, I don’t recall ever being taught how to do it, or why it was so important until CSCI 362. While it seems apparent why testing would be important when creating a complex system or product, there are unique circumstances in software development that require more of an explanation to understand its importance to its success or failure. As I was thinking through some of the way’s software testing might be different from testing, say a new bicycle design, it became apparent that software testing would likely be more complicated for a few reasons. Testing Reflections Don't Think They Tested For This. First, the number of possible ways to interact with a software system is practically limitless whereas with a bicycle it is expected that the user will interact with it in a limited number of ways. This may seem like an oversimplification, but the same could...

Chapter 8: Software Testing This chapter went over development testing, test-driven development, release testing, and user testing. The first question below was interesting to do as the scenarios in the text had user interactions and that made it easier to visualize how the system may be used. The wilderness weather system does not interact with a user, therefore, the scenario revolved around what the system might encounter in daily operation.  8.7. Write a scenario that could be used to help design tests for the wilderness weather system. A particular wilderness weather system is to be accessed by satellite uplink. The wilderness system collects its readings from the Anemometer, Barometer, thermometers, rain, sunshine, and visibilities gauges. Due to inclement weather, the wilderness weather system has not transmitted this data over the satellite link. The weather in the area of this system is very frigid with low visibility and has had to pause instrument operation to gene...

2.1. Suggest the most appropriate generic software process model that might be used as a basis for managing the development of the following systems. Explain your answer according to the type of system being developed: A system to control antilock braking in a car The antilock braking of a car is a safety-critical system and therefore it seems the most appropriate model would be the waterfall model. The requirements analysis and definition of the system would be necessarily thorough and extensive documentation for the approval process would be expected. Also, the requirements for the system would remain relatively static, an area where the waterfall model excels. This is the most 'formal' model presented in the text. A virtual reality system to support software maintenance Integration and configuration would allow for a sufficiently generic yet modifiable program. Because the system may be used in different software environments having increased adaptability is cruci...

MMM The Mythical Man Month, written by Frederick P. Brooks in the mid 70’s, gets straight to the heart of flaws in the way people then, and to some degree now, may think about software development.   Much like his No Silver Bullet , Brooks uses colorful language and analogies to describe the development process and its flaws. The term tar pit still evokes an image of floundering dinosaurs in their “mortal struggle” and Brooks uses this term to describe the current state of large-system programming; teams struggling to meet deadlines, budgets, goals. The five reasons Brooks outlines as causes for these failings are poorly developed estimating techniques, assumptions about manpower and months being interchangeable, lack of stubbornness, bad schedules, and poor responses to schedule slippage. Approximate? Admittedly, I have put little thought into the development process in large scale efforts of software engineering despite having been involved in non-software related govern...

This is my take on the conceptual and process views of 3 different machines. I found myself having difficulty distinguishing between the two in some instances. I seemed to want to go directly to the process view and skip the conceptual view altogether. I'd like to find some simple, real-world examples of conceptual and then process view diagrams of the same system to see the differences. 6.4: Draw diagrams showing a conceptual view and a process view of the architectures of the following systems: A ticket machine used by passengers at a railway station. A computer-controlled video conferencing system that allows video, audio, and computer data to be visible to several participants at the same time. A robot floor-cleaner that is intended to clean relatively clear spaces such as corridors. The cleaner must be able to sense walls and other obstructions. %3CmxGraphModel%3E%3Croot%3E%3CmxCell%20id%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3CmxCell%20id%3D%221%22%20parent%3D%220%22%2...

System Modeling 5.3. You have been asked to develop a system that will help with planning large-scale events and parties such as weddings, graduation celebrations, and birthday parties. Using an activity diagram, model the process context for such a system that shows the activities involved in planning a party ( booking a venue, organizing invitations, etc.) and the system elements that might be used at each stage. This diagram does not include food, drinks, decorations, chairs, equipment, DJ, photography, or the other myriad of things possible at a party. It simply goes through the process of determining the size, date, venue, guest list, and invitations.     5.5 Develop a sequence diagram showing the interactions involved when a student registers for a course in a university. Courses may have limited enrollment, so the registration process must include checks that places are available. Assume that the student accesses an electronic course catalog to find out about a...

Requirements Engineering 4.5. Using the technique suggested here, where natural language descriptions are presented in a standard format, write plausible user requirements for the following functions: An unattended petrol (gas) pump system that includes a credit card reader. The customer swipes the card through the reader, then specifies the amount of fuel required. The fuel is delivered and the customer's account debited.  The system should display instructions about the fueling process that progress as the process unfolds. (Swipe card > Select fuel type > Select amount of fuel required > How to dispense fuel) The system shall monitor or detect the swiping of a credit card to begin a transaction.  The system shall ask the customer the type and quantity of fuel required. The system shall check fuel levels available to be dispensed are adequate to fulfill requested fuel amount prior to charging the customers card.  The system shall ensure funds are sec...

Better than Goldfish, but Not by Much The four articles: The Magical Number 7 , Tire Pressure Monitoring System , Spy Car Act of 2015 , and Test-Driven Development  were interrelated in an interesting way. At first, I had a difficult time understanding where The Magical Number 7 fit in this group but after a short time, I realized how the research on attention spans and memory in the article was related to Test-Driven Development. Essentially, The Magical Number 7 is explaining research done in the 1950s that gave some insights into the short term memory and attention spans in average humans were relatively stable across a wide range of people. The key takeaway, and how this relates to TDD, is that human beings have short attention spans and as our knowledge about the subject lessens our ability to recall information decreases precipitously and because of this TDD is an ideal tool to work with that limitation. TDD works by limiting the amount of new information the developer nee...

Common concerns in the articles and reflect upon them Common things I found throughout the four chapters and several readings were that systems require reliable, safe, and secure systems and the best way to obtain and maintain these systems is through a systematic approach do design, development, and deployment with reliability, safety, and security as focus areas. The Therac-25 Accidents article shows how a failure in the development of software can have potentially lethal consequences. Had the engineers developing this equipment used techniques such as n-version programming or more thorough safety verification processes there is a higher probability that the accidents would not have occurred. There were repeating themes throughout the chapters such as reliability, dependability, safety and security, etc. This was the case when discussing reliability engineering, safety engineering, security engineering, and resilience engineering. Each section discussed the importance...

Ch 11 & 12 What is the common characteristic of all architectural styles that are geared to supporting software fault tolerance?  The three fault-tolerant architectural styles outlined were protection systems, self-monitoring systems, and N-version programming. Each of these systems uses software & sometimes hardware diversity deal with faults. Protection systems can use separate sensors and software to monitor the system and the environment for potentially unsafe states and attempt to move to a safe state. Self-monitoring systems use multiple versions of software and hardware to complete the task and the system compares the results and makes a decision based on these comparisons. Finally, N-version programming uses multiple versions of software, developed by separate teams, to interpret and act on the same input and then compares the results. If a fault is found the fault manager deals with the faulty unity by attempting a repair or removing it from the system for rep...

10.6. Explain why it is reasonable to assume that the use of dependable processes will lead to the creation of dependable software. Software development via dependable processes is a formalized and systematic way of developing software that has five attributes; Auditable, Diverse, Documentable, Robust, and Standardized. The goal is to reduce the possibilities of introducing errors into the system as well as finding and removing any errors that may have made it into said system. By using a systematic approach to development engineers can learn from past mistakes or oversights as well as follow a model designed specifically to create dependable software. There is a focus on documentation, specification, change management, redundancy, and diversity that all facilitate the creation of a more reliable system for software development. Therefore, dependable processes typically lead to dependable software. 10.10. It has been suggested that the need for regulation inhibits innovation...

Common Threads While reading through the four articles I found myself thinking about the little experience I have in the programming or software development world but that in the little experience creating small, mostly meaningless 'programs' the concepts and problems discussed were relevant. A common theme I found throughout was the importance of design, organization, and testing. Should I have spent a bit more time developing a gameplan before diving face first into creating simple data structures examples? Definitely. Should I have kept a detailed log of all of the ways I tried and failed to solve a problem with my program as the " Cherry-Picking and the Scientific Method ?" suggested? Yes again. The idea that the development of the software wasn't primarily about the coding itself but the process and all the hurdles that must be overcome throughout was something I found intriguing. Incremental development Incremental development was mentioned outright i...

Enjoy. Four Important Attributes Four important attributed identified by Sommerville are Acceptability, Dependability and Security, Efficiency, and Maintainability. These are broadly defined to provide the framework in which software development should work within. Four additions I'd consider making to the list are a bit more specific but important in their own right.  Ethically Designed and Used Software should be designed in a way that takes into consideration its future use and what the initial developers understood its use would be. For example, if a software engineer designs a facial recognition product to allow users to better sort photographs for users. It is unethical for their work to be used in a nefarious manner without explicit permission. Section 1.2 is devoted to software engineering ethics and placing an emphasis on this topic seems warranted considering the larger and larger impact that software has on the day to day lives of the majority of the world. U...

About Me My name is Dwayne Ferguson, I am 34 years old and am a student at College of Charleston. I have a wife of 12 years and two wonderful children, 9 and 6. I spent a bit more than a decade at my previous job but we decided that chapter of our lives was over and both my wife and I headed back to school.  Being back in school has been an adjustment as many of the ways my experience in the 'real world' functioned differ drastically from the college experience. Not to say they are all good or bad, just different. Luckily, I've been interested in computers of all kinds since a young age and found something I enjoyed learning about in the Computer Science Department.  I hope to learn to apply the formal education gained at the College of Charleston with practical applications as I progress through school and hopefully end up finding meaningful work in the non-profit world. I'm looking forward to learning more about software development and hopefully hon...