Annoucements

• Monday 6th January: I have updated the list of provisional grades to show assignment 3 grades, and the total course grade. I have also included adjustments for best project bonuses, etc.
• Thursday 19th December: A preliminary set of grades is now available for the final exam. I've also made some requested adjustments for assignments 1 and 2, and for the midterm. If you have requested an adjustment and it doesn't appear in this table, please let me know. Grades for assignment 3 will be available in the next couple of days. You can now also see the final exam paper with model answers (bear in mind that the answers to the longer questions are only suggestions - many other possible answers were acceptable!)
• (old annoucements)
  

About the Course

This course covers the theory, tools and techniques of information systems analysis and design. Topics include: theory of systems and organizations; structured analysis and design; user interface design.

General Course Handouts

• Course Information Sheet
• Notes on Teamworking (including a pointer to the team information sheet)
• The Frequently Asked Questions list.

Lecture Notes & Weekly Readings

Here I'll post the lecture notes, and suggest some relevant parts of the textbook to read as a supplement to each week's lecture topics. These are from the required text, Bennet et al., "Object-Oriented Systems Analysis and Design", except where noted otherwise. Note that chapter and page references are different if you have the first edition of the book - I'll try and indicate the differences.

• Week 2:
  • 17/9/2002 - Lecture 01: Introduction (2up or 6up)
  • 19/9/2002 - Lecture 02: Organizations and Systems (2up or 6up)
  • Read all of chapter 1 of Bennett.
• Week 3:
  • 24/9/2002 - Lecture 03: Lifecycles (2up or 6up)
  • 26/9/2002 - Lecture 04: Conducting a feasibility Study (2up or 6up)
  • 26/9/2002 - Notes on the PIECES framework
  • 27/9/2002 - Tutorial notes - Scoping the problem
  • Read chapters 2 and 3 of Bennett for more background information. Bennett does not cover feasbility studies particularly well. For more guidance, take a look at Prof. Sauter's resources on estimation and feasibility.
• Week 4:
  • 1/10/2002 - Lectures 05&06: Information Acquisition (2up or 6up)
  • 4/10/2002 - Tutorial notes - Professional Ethics
  • Read chapter 6 of Bennett (chp 5 in the old edition)
• Week 5: (Assignment 1 is due in the tutorial this week)
  • 8/10/2002 - Lecture 07: Introduction to Requirements Modelling (2up or 6up)
  • 10/10/2002 - Lecture 08: Modelling Use Cases (2up or 6up)
  • Read chapters 5 and 7 of Benett (the old edition didn't have a chapter "modelling concepts", so there's only chapter 6 to read - it's not as good an introduction as the new edition).
• Week 6:
• 15/10/2002 - Lecture 09: Modelling Information Structure (2up or 6up)
• 17/10/2002 - Lecture 10: Adding Detail to your models (2up or 6up)
• This would be a really good time to get familiar with the first case study in Bennett, if you haven't already done so. Read sections A1, A2, and A3 (the old edition has less on the case study - just A1 and A2 cover the requirements modelling). This should give you a good feel about how to proceed with the modelling for your projects.
• Week 7:
  • 22/10/2002 - Lecture 11: Modelling State (2up or 6up)
  • 24/10/2002 - Lecture 12: Modelling Business Rules (2up or 6up)
  • Now is the time to read the UML modelling chapters: chapters 8 through 11, in parallel with the lectures.(chapters 7 through 10 if you have the old edition).
• Week 8 (midterm test in the tutorial this week)
  • 29/10/2002 - Lecture 13 - Non Functional Requirements (2up or 6up)
  • 31/10/2002 - Lecture 14 - Documenting your requirements (2up or 6up)
  • Bennett is rather poor on both NFRs and on writing specifications, so I won't recommend any sections of the book this week. You shouldn't need much more information than is in the lecture notes.
• Week 9:
  • 5/11/2002 - Lecture 15 - Moving into Design (2up or 6up)
  • 7/11/2002 - Lecture 16 - Software Architectures (2up or 6up)
  • Bennett does a good introduction to architectural design in chapters 12 amd 13 (chps 11 and 12 if you have the first edition). Read them this week!
• Week 10:
  • 12/11/2002 - Lecture 17 - Object Oriented Architectures (2up or 6up)
  • 14/11/2002 - Lecture 18 - Designing Objects (2up or 6up)
  • This week you should read chapters 13 and 14 in Bennett (chps 12 and 13 in the old edition). The lectures this week are based directly on these chapters. Sure, I know I already recommended reading chapter 13 last week, but just in case you didn't get round to it, I'm recommending it again!
• Week 11:
  • Both lectures this week will be given by Attila Barta. Prof Easterbrook is away all week.
  • 19/11/2002 - Lecture 19 - Entity Relationship Models (2up or 6up)
  • 21/11/2002 - Lecture 20 - Selecting a Computing Platform (2up or 6up)
  • No suggested readings this week, unless you want to look ahead to next week's readings on database design. We'll meet more on Entity Relationship Models in next week's lectures.
• Week 12:
  • 26/11/2002 - Lecture 21 - Relational Database Design (2up or 6up)
  • 28/11/2002 - Lecture 22 - Object Oriented Database Design (2up or 6up)
  • 29/11/2002 - Tutorial Notes: Database Design
  • Bennett covers database design very well in chapter 18. The book covers the ground pretty fast, but gets all the essentials in. You won't need to know more than what's in this chapter for this course.
• Week 13 (last week of term!)
• 3/12/2002 - Lecture 23 - Designing the User Interface (2up or 6up)
• 5/12/2002 - Lecture 24 - Designing User Interface Classes (2up or 6up)
• Bennet covers interface design from an object-oriented perspective in chapters 16 and 17. The lectures this week are based on these chapters. Read them early - you need to apply some of this in your third assignment.

Other stuff:

• Humour

Assignments and Exams

One of our TAs, Bowen Hui, put together some guidance for the assignments, including tips on what to avoid.

• Assignment 1:
  • Description (and also a detailed markscheme)
  • Samples from 2001: sample1, sample2; sample3
  • Samples from 2002 (winter term): sample4
• Assignment 2:
  • Description (and also a detailed markscheme)
  • Samples from 2002 (winter term): sample1, sample2
  • Best assignments from this term: best1
• Assignment 3:
  • Description (and also a detailed markscheme)
  • Samples from 2001: sample1, sample2, sample4, sample5
  • Samples from 2002 (winter term): sample3
  • Best assignments from this term: (not available for reasons of confidentiality)
• Midterm Exam :
  • Samples with model answers from winter 2001; from winter 2002
  • This term's midterm exam with model answers
• Final Exam:
  • Samples:Winter 2001; Winter 2002; Winter 2002-UTM
  • Note: The structure of this term's exam will be slightly different from previous years: it will have 5 questions, each worth 20 marks, and the first of these will consist of several short answer questions.
  • This term's final exam with model answers

There is a Preliminary List of Grades. (6/1/2003).

Contact Details

Professor:

TAs:

Attila Barta (atibarta@cs.toronto.edu)
Bowen Hui (bowen@cs.toronto.edu)
Theophanis Tsandilas (fanis@cs.toronto.edu)
Wei Xie (didixie@cs.toronto.edu)
Alexei Lapouchnian (alexei@cs.toronto.edu)