06-19321
Software System Components 2

Level 2/I

Dr S Vickers
Dr R Beale
Dr G K Theodoropoulos
Dr R W Dearden

20 credits in Sem2

The School of Computer Science Module Description is a strict subset of this Syllabus Page. (The University module description has not yet been checked against the School's.)

Changes and Updates

Most recent update: 28 June 2005.

New module for 2005/06.

Outline

This module presents more advanced software development techniques, enabling the design and development of programs of medium-scale size and complexity. Through a series of lab exercises, students apply concepts taught in the lectures and at the same time practice the design and development of medium-scale programs. Together with its companion module, Software System Components 1, it is designed to equip students with programming abilities which may be needed in an individual final year project. The module covers the three topics of databases, web programming and concurrency, and distributed computing.

Aims

The aims of this module are to:

Improve students' programming skills generally, and develop students' programming design and development skills to cope with large programs.
Provide programming experience with more advanced but commonly used Java class libraries and other packages as appropriate.
Teach specific skills in databases, web programming and concurrency, and distributed computing.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this module, the student should be able to:		Assessed by:
1	Use Entity-Relationship diagrams to construct and explain conceptual models of databases, and then design tables for a relational database.	Examination, Continuous assessment
2	Write and explain SQL queries for a relational database.	Examination, Continuous assessment
3	Query and update a relational database from Java.	Continuous assessment
4	Explain the servlet model and structure, including the servlet lifecycle and application/session/request/page scope.	Examination, Continuous assessment
5	Configure, install and use servlet based web applications, implementing correct servlet request and response code, including html form processing, session handling, database connectivity and security.	Continuous assessment
6	Explain, apply and evaluate web application architecture and technologies.	Examination, Continuous assessment
7	Explain the concepts and issues of threads and synchronisation, including thread pools.	Examination, Continuous assessment
8	Implement, debug and test multithreaded programs with appropriate synchronisation, in a variety of contexts such as Swing, collection classes and network I/O mechanisms.	Continuous assessment
9	Explain and implement socket based communication.	Continuous assessment, Examination
10	Implement programmatic email sending.	Continuous assessment
11	Explain and use object serialisation and use RPC to interact with remote objects.	Examination, Continuous assessment
12	Explain and implement a web service.	Continuous assessment, Examination

Restrictions, Prerequisites and Corequisites

Restrictions:

None

Prerequisites:

06-18190 Software Workshop 1, 06-18187 Foundations of Computer Science, 06-11224 Introduction to Software Engineering

Co-requisites:

06-19343 Software System Components 1, 06-19340 Computer Systems & Architecture

Teaching

Teaching methods:

3 hrs/week lectures/tutorials, 2-3 hrs/week labs.

Contact hours:

Approx. 63

Assessment

2 hour examination (80%), continuous assessment (20%). Resit by examination only.

The continuous assessment will consist of programming exercises.

Recommended Books

Title	Author(s)	Publisher, Date	Comments
Core JAVA 2 Volume 1 - Fundamentals (7th Ed)	Cay Horstmann & Gary Cornell	Sun Microsystems Press/Prentice Hall, 2005	This provides an excellent reference and a fast paced introduction to Java for those who can already program. As such it is suitable for a second level module. It covers Swing, exceptions and object orientation as well as a number of other topics relevant to this module. The 7th Edition is updated to J2SE 5.0.
Core JAVA 2 Volume 2 - Advanced Features (7th Ed)	Cay Horstmann & Gary Cornell	Sun Microsystems Press / Prentice Hall, 2005	This follows on from the previous volume and covers JDBC and the Collection classes in particular as well as many other advanced topics.
Java Threads (3rd Ed)	Scott Oaks and Henry Wong	O'Reilly, 2004	Reference. In-depth coverage of concurrency aspects of Java.
Concurrency: State Models & Java Programs	Jeff Magee and Jeff Kramer	Wiley, 1999	Background reading. General coverage of concurrency, with examples and demonstrations in Java.
Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages (Enterprise Edition S.)	Marty Hall, Larry Brown (Eds)	Prentice Hall PTR, 2003

Detailed Syllabus

The detailed syllabus is still to be written; only broad topics are given here.

Databases (4 weeks)
Internet and distributed computing (4 weeks)
Threads and concurrency (3 weeks)

Relevant Links