SSE01 Exam and Report

Overall

The SSE01 exam is an individual, oral, 15-minute exam without preparation and with a pass/fail grade. The exam will be in Danish or English, by the preferences of the student. You will be examined according to the overall objectives we have listed below. Concretely, you will be asked to describe specific parts of your project, which will lead to discussions of specific parts of the curriculum. The four topics that are considered to be of interest are listed below, which will allow you to prepare a single slide (physical, for the overhead projector) for each topic (see details below).

The curriculum for the exam can be found on the literature web page (bottom). Please note that your project is considered part of the curriculum in the sense that we will discuss it during the exam. Thus, it makes sense to use examples from your project, and we will ask you to explain certain parts of the project during the exam. For reference, we have included the course description at the bottom of this page.

Objectives

At the exam, we expect students to be able to:

• Demonstrate a confident understanding of core object-oriented concepts such as objects, classes, inheritance, interfaces, and references. We expect students to be able to illustrate technical points on a blackboard using Java code; syntactic details are however considered unimportant in this context.
• Show an understanding of UML as a visual modeling language: knowledge of the core diagram types in the course (domain model, SSD, DCD, sequence diagram) and be able to illustrate technical points on the blackboard using such diagrams. We expect students to have a basic knowledge of the visual syntax, for example distinguishing between generalization and aggregation.
• Demonstrate an understanding of how UP works and how it can be used as an iterative process. We consider it especially important to demonstrate a knowledge of the reasoning behind working iteratively, but an overall knowledge of the key elements (e.g., requirements, analysis, design, implementation, ...) in the process is also important.
• Demonstrate a knowledge of the similarities and differences between analysis and design and the associated models. This includes having an understanding of what it means to create a domain model and how it relates to the design model.
• Be able to argue for critical design decisions in their projects using material from the course, such as GRASP patterns and (if appropriate) design patterns.
• Demonstrate an overall understanding of basic techniques for programming applications for pervasive and ubiquitous systems, in particular Java RMI and general issues in distributed systems, which also includes having an understanding of how threads work in Java.

An understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of using agent-based technologies in a pervasive computing setting is clearly considered an advantage during hte exam, but is not as such considered mandatory since the use of agents is not mandatory.

Topics

1. Analysis: evolution of use cases into domain model and SSDs (relevant information on slide: use case overview, domain model, selected SSD(s)).
2. Design: design of your project, including any use of patterns, GRASP or GOF (relevant information on slide: class diagram, selected sequence diagram(s)).
3. Unified process: how your development process helped shape the project (relevant information on slide: what did you do in what iteration)
4. Agents: how agents have been used in your project (Note: will only be asked if you actually used agents in your project.)

Schedule

Final exam plan (PDF) now available (sorry, the link was there before but dead).

SSE01 Report

The report is considered to be one of the artifacts you must produce during the course, and is considered curriculum for the exam. See project description for details.

SSE01 Course Description

Note: the course description is included here for reference, you don't need to do anything with it. What counts for the exam is the curriculum.

SSE01: Introduction to Software Systems Engineering (5 ECTS)

Prerequisites:

None.

Aims:

To introduce and motivate the development of object-oriented software systems which combines aspects of pervasive and ubiquitous computing (PUC).

After completing this course, students should be able to:

• Understand possibilities for application of PUC technologies
• Conduct and document a group-based development project with emphasis on the resulting prototype
• Conduct and document a problem-oriented study project

Synopsis:

Firstly, the students must specify, design, construct, document, and evaluate a software prototype involving one or more simulated aspects of pervasive and ubiquitous computing. The students get experience with presenting, discussing, documenting and coordinating their activities. The very practical and concrete development project is the main element of the course. Secondly, the courses provide a general introduction to the practice of software engineering in a research context: problem analysis, project scoping and planning, documentation of experimental and analytical results, discussion, contextualization and evaluation of their work. We call this the study projects in relation to the before-mentioned development projects.

In the projects, students apply and test their competencies within a subset of the following areas:

• Object-oriented programming (e.g. Java).
• Construction of object-oriented systems using algorithms and data structures from libraries and frameworks (e.g. J2SE).
• Object-oriented analysis and design processes (e.g Unified Process) as well as graphical modelling languages (e.g. Unified Modelling Language).
• Object-oriented construction of distributed and concurrent systems (e.g. using remote method invocation and threads in Java)

Evaluation:

The students submit a written project report documenting their activities and results. The projects are evaluated at an oral examination with grades according to the pass/fail marking scale. Internal examiner. The examination takes as its starting point the written report and a potential demonstration of the constructed software. The duration of the evaluation depends on the number of students in the group.

Course type:

Form: the course is organized in terms of student projects. A lecturer acts as supervisor for the project groups, and may organize seminars, workshops, study groups, and/or individual consultations for the student groups. All the projects must be defined within the course theme by the students, and approved by the supervisor.

Teaching period:

First quarter.

Responsible teachers:

Ulrik Pagh Schultz and Kasper Hallenborg

Literature:

Remarks:

The course is compulsory for the international master's students of Software Systems Engineering. If international master's students attend the course it will be taught in English.