CSE/ISE 308
Fall 2001
Stony Brook 		Software Engineering
Annie Liu
Homework 1 		Handout H1
Aug. 28, 2001
Due Aug. 30 and Sept. 4
Questionnaire; Customer Wanting Software; What I Did

This assignment has three parts, each worth 10,80,10% of the grade,respectively. Part I is due in class on Thursday Aug. 30; Parts II and III are due in class on Tuesday Sept. 4.

Part I. Questionnaire.

Fill out the Questionnaire in Handout Q, and submit it by Thursday in class. This will help forming groups. If you have preferences working with specific other students in a group, send me an email with all the names and explain why.

Part II. Customer Wanting Software.

Describe a software that you would like as a customer, and create a homepage that contains the description. Here are more specific descriptions.

  • It should be a software that you think is important but to your knowledge is not currently available exactly as you want. Explain why it is important, and how different it is from related things that you know are available. You may want to give references, e.g., links to other webpages, to support your description. Note that this software project is independent of what project you will select to do for the course.

  • The software can be standalone, or it can be a component in a larger system, as long as you specify the appropriate interface though which you can use the system (needed for testing and evaluation later), it is fine. You don't need to worry too much about exactly 2000 or 3000 lines of code is needed to implement it, but keep in mind that requirements for a too complicated or a too simple system can not be written in a page or two of English.

  • It needs not be a Java applet; it needs not be implemented using Java either. The language matter may or may not be part of the description. However, if the resulting system must be working in a specific environment, then you need to specify it, e..g., running over a web browser. Note that, for evaluation purposes at the end, as long as others can download your system, build and use it easily, it is fine.

  • The description should be as clear and complete as you can possibly write in a half day or a day, in one or two pages. If you think of building a software like building a house, then specifying what software you want is similar to specifying what a house you want exactly.

  • Once you are done with this part, email me two lines of the following forms 
    <a href="url-of-your-description">Name of the Software You Want</a>
<a href="url-of-your-homepage">Your Name</a>
    For example the following two lines 
    <a href="webSpreadsheet.html">Web Spreadsheet</a> 
<a href="http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~liu/">Annie Liu</a>
    in this html file give me Web Spreadsheet and Annie Liu, following the first of which you can see a sample description from me; it is extremely short since I made use a description from Prof. Phil Lewis.

    Part III. What I did.

    Describe what you did for the course this week. Make it a simple list of brief items, and elaborate if you find anything particularly interesting. The list may include, e.g., doing items 1 and 2 of this homework, reading chapter 1 of the textbook, web pages on UML, or a related magazine article, learning CVS, etc.

    Bonus.

    Through out the course, you get extra credit for brining up anything particularly interesting about software development (facts, tools, lessons learned, ...) to my attention. We can share them with the entire class.