EE 461L Software Engineering and Design Laboratory

Instructor: Professor Miryung Kim

This course is a new undergraduate laboratory course to be offered from Spring 2012. Here's a flyer.

Lecture (#16645). TTH 9:30 to 11AM in ENS 116.
Labs (#16648) Tue 2-5PM in ENS 307 or (#16649) Tue 6:30-9:30PM in ENS 307
Office Hours: TTH 11AM-12PM in ACES 5.118
Teaching Assistants: Kevin Boos and Rui Qiu

Course Description

This course focuses on providing hands-on experience in designing and developing large-scale software systems with emphasis on the use of automated analysis tools and techniques that enable large-scale software development. Students will generate concrete software engineering artifacts at all stages of the software life-cycle. Design principles and methods for large-scale software system development; design and modeling tools; collaborative development environment; object-oriented design and analysis; design patterns and refactoring; integration and testing tools; debugger and bug-finder; program comprehension; software life-cycle and evolution.

Three lecture hours and three laboratory hours a week for one semester.

Pre-requisite: EE422C (or EE322C) or Computer Science 336 with a grade of at least C-; credit with a grade of at least C- or registration for EE 360C or Computer Science 357. (Students may take 360C concurrently with 461L)

Course Objectives

The goal of this course is to teach practical software development methods and tools in the context of developing a software system with other students in collaboration. Practical development tools include

Analysis tools (e.g., debuggers, profilers, automated bug-finders, style-checkers, program differencing tools, program investigation tools)
Construction tools (e.g., compilation managers and build scripts)
Tool support for collaboration (e.g., version control systems and problem report databases)
Design tools (e.g. UML-based modeling tool)
GNU/Linux operating system environment, command-line utilities, bash shell scripting

Practical software design, construction, and evolution methods include

Object-oriented design techniques such as design patterns
Requirements elicitation and formal specification
Refactoring
Unit testing and regression testing
Pair programming
Basic static and dynamic program analysis: hoare logic, data flow analysis, program slicing, heap analysis, etc

Course Organization

As a four credit laboratory course, the class time will be organized around three hours of lecture per week, used to introduce the software engineering techniques and tools central to the course. An additional three hours of laboratory time per week will be used for introducing and executing the laboratory assignments.

	Lecture	Laboratory Materials	Project and Exams
Week 1	Lecture 1. Overview Lecture 2. Collaborative Software Development Version Control System Version Merging and Conflict Resolution Problem Report Database	Exercise 1a: Subversion Version Control System Exercise 1b: Project - Saros (Distributed Pair Programming)
Week 2	Lecture 3. Unix Commands Part 1 Lecture 4. Unix Commands and Shell Scripting Part 2	Exercise 2: Unix Environment and Command-line Utilities
Week 3	Lecture 5. Requirements Elicitation and Analysis Lecture 6. Requirements Analysis using UML Use Cases and Statecharts	Exercise 3: Unix Commands and Bash Shell Scripting	SAROS Part A. Reverse Engineering and Documentation Project SAROS Part A Solutions
Week 4	Lecture 7. Object-Oriented Design and Analysis Lecture 8. Object-Oriented Design and Analysis using UML Class Diagram and Message Sequence Charts	Exercise 4: UML
Week 5	Lecture 9. Design Patterns Part 1 Lecture 10. Design Patterns Part 2 Abstract Factory, Factory Method, Singleton, Adapter, Flyweight, Bridge, Observer, Mediator, Strategy, Visitor	In-lab UML Quiz
Week 6	Continuation of Design Patterns	Exercise 5: Improving Design Design Pattern and Refactoring
Week 7	Lecture 11. Design Patterns Part 3 Lecture 12. Refactoring Part 1	Design Patterns Quiz	SAROS Extension Part B. Design Extension SAROS Part B Starter Files.zip
Week 8	Lecture 13. Refactoring Part 2 Midterm
	Spring Break
Week 9	Midterm Review Lecture 14. Testing, Statement, Branch, and Path Coverage, JUNIT	Exercise 6: jUnit Testing
Week 10	Continuation on Test Coverage, Test Generation and Regression Test Selection	Exercise 7: Ant Build System	SAROS Extension Part C. Implementation and Testing SAROS Part C Starter Files.zip
Week 11	Lecture 15. Build Management and Documentation, ANT, JAVADOC Lecture 16. Debugging and Eclipse Debugger, GDB, DDD	SAROS Project part C Q&A sessions
Week 12	Continuation on Automated Debugging, Delta Debugging Lecture 17. Software Inspection, Code Review, Pair Programming, Hoare Logic	Exercise 8: Eclipse Debugger Exercise 9: Bug Finding & FindBug
Week 13	Lecture 18. Static Program Analysis, Hoare Logic, Loop Invariant, Data Flow Analysis, Program Slicing Lecture 19. Dynamic Program Analysis, Profiler, and Runtime Verification	Exercise 10: Program Understanding
Week 14	Continuation of Static and Dynamic Analysis. Lecture 21. Review of Lectures and Final Exam Practice Questions	Demo your project Part C solution during the lab session.	SAROS Extension Part D. New Feature Proposal - You can propose a new feature and justify your rationale. - The assignment will be out on 4/24 during the lecture and will be due 4/30 11:59PM sharp. As I said in the class, no late policy applies to Part D. - 10% of the project grade
Week 15	Class Presentations (5/1 and 5/3)		In-class presentation of new features, why you think the features are necessary, etc. Mock-up screenshot. We will present 10 teams in each lecture. You will be given 4 minutes each. Two slides maximum per team.

Assignments

The main focus of the assignments of the course will be an integrated series of software engineering projects exercising the tools and techniques covered in class. The students will perform these both individually and in teams, with variations in teaming activities across the projects. The course also has a midterm and a final.

Grading

60% Laboratory assignments and projects: a series of software engineering projects make up 30% and 30% for laboratory assignments.
15% Midterm
15% Final exam
10% Course participation

Intended Benefits for Students

(1) Students will gain knowledge in objective-oriented design, analysis, and testing techniques.
(2) Students will gain hands-on learning experience in collaborative software design and development and also become familiar with practical tools that enable them to construct and evolve a large-scale software system; this course will make our undergraduate students attractive to software engineering industry.
(3) Students will learn about and gain experience in generating software engineering artifacts that can clearly and concisely communicate design intent and realization.
(4) Students will be naturally introduced to software engineering research, in particular automated analyses and development tools. This class will also discuss advances in development tools and analyses from a software engineering researcher's perspective.

Textbooks

(Required) Essential Open Source Toolset (ISBN-10: 0470844450, ISBN-13: 978-0470844458)

(Required) Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction (ISBN-10: 0735619670, ISBN-13: 978-0735619678)

(Optional) Linux Pocket Guide (ISBN-10: 0596006284, ISBN-13: 978-0596006280)

(Optional) UML 2.0 Pocket Reference (ISBN-10: 0596102089, ISBN-13: 978-0596102081)

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How is this different from EE 360F (Introduction to Software Engineering)?
EE360F is an introduction to software engineering with focus on software engineering life cycle and process. This lab-based course extends these concepts to include instruction in practical design techniques and artifacts and hands-on experience in applying the tools and techniques discussed in other courses.

Q: Why do we need to teach development tools in universities? Don't students already learn these methods and tools through an internship?
Students may encounter software development tools through an internship; however, when they do not understand how these tools work internally and what are strengths and limitations of these tools, they cannot use these tools effectively.

Q: Don't we already have a senior capstone course? Why can't students take EE 464 instead?
EE464 is a capstone course designed for all students in electrical engineering and computer engineering. Thus, EE464 does not provide an opportunity to introduce software developments tools systematically in the context of collaborative software development. In fact, the introduction of this advanced software engineering laboratory will better prepare our students for serious software engineering 464 projects.