Computer Science (COMP) 361

Overview

System analysis and design deal with planning the development of information systems through understanding and specifying in detail what a system shall do and how the components of the system should be implemented and work together. System analysts solve business problems through analysing the requirements of information systems and designing such systems by applying analysis and design techniques. This course deals with the concepts, skills, methodologies, techniques, tools, and perspectives essential for systems analysts. The practical component of COMP 361 is object-oriented and use-case driven, making it possible for students to go through the steps of system analysis and design to solve a real life business problem.

Learning Outcomes

After successfully completing this course, students have gained comprehensive theoretical knowledge and practical skills about the system development process of information systems, ranging from gathering data to analyze and specify the requirements of a system, to designing the system components and environments, building general and detailed models that assist programmers in implementing the system, and designing a database for storing data, a user-interfaces for data input and output as well as controls to protect the system and its data.

Outline

Unit 0: Introduction and overview. This unit provides an introduction into system analysis and design, as well as an overview of the course materials and resources.

Unit 1: Systems development and the systems analyst. In this unit, students will learn about the organizational and business context of system development as well as the tasks and responsibilities of system analysts.

Unit 2: Systems development methodologies, models, tools, and techniques. In this unit, student will learn to explain and apply system development methodologies, models, tools and techniques for developing quality software.

Unit 3: Project management and the Unified Process. In this unit, students will learn about project management in the context of system development.

Unit 4: The requirements discipline. In this unit, students will learn about the requirements discipline, including how to define, prioritize, and evaluate requirements of an information system as well as how to build models that specify the system requirements.

Unit 5: Detailed requirements modeling. In this unit, students will extend their knowledge in requirements modeling (as learnt in Unit 4) and learn to apply requirements modeling techniques to develop detailed models.

Unit 6: Design activities and environments. In this unit, students will learn to describe, organize, and structure the components of a system, including decisions about the system's hardware, software, and network environment .

Unit 7: Use case realization. In this unit, students will learn to apply object-oriented design in order to build detailed models that assist programmers in implementing the respective system.

Unit 8: System access. In this unit, students will learn to discuss and specify how to store and exchange data in the system by considering database management, human-computer interaction, and security issues. Furthermore, they will learn to create database models, user-computer dialogs and controls.

Unit 9: Implementation. In this unit, student will learn about implementation, software testing, and deployment issues.

Evaluation

To receive credit for COMP 361, you must achieve a course composite grade of at least “D” (50 percent), including an average grade of 50 percent on all assignments, and at least 50 percent on the final examination. The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.