Advanced Software Engineering

Instructor: Bernd Bruegge

Spring 1997

Description

The field of software re-engineering deals with problems that arise when large complex programs that have existed over long periods of time have to be changed. One of the challenges is that the underlying application domain model and system design of the "legacy system" are often lost, that is, the system is no longer model-based (in many cases such a model never existed in the first place).

In this course you will learn how to recover the analysis and design of a legacy system, maintain it with a software lifecycle CASE tool, and keep the models synchronized while changing the functionality and the system design to incorporate new technology such as multi-modal input, heterogenous distributed objects and wireless communication. The course has three components:

• The project component is the continued development of OWL, an information management system for intelligent buildings developed in the Fall 95 for the Intelligent Workplace. At the end of the course the system will be delivered to our client Professor Volker Hartkopf, the director of the center for building performance.
• The lecture component is organized as a seminar, You will be asked to select an advanced software engineering topic from a list - including concurrent engineering, distributed objects, software components, patterns, frameworks, multi-modal inputs, object-oriented databases, configuration management, object-oriented testing - and present it to the class.
• We will also try to schedule presentations by invited speakers from industry on topics such as reengineering, system integration and system delivery in the real world.

Upon completion of the course, you should be able to reconstruct and review the information in an existing software system (reengineering), understand the difference between a program and a software product, apply model-based software engineering techniques, understand iterative and incremental development and work in a project-based communication structure.

You will have demonstrated the ability to work as a member of a project team, assuming various roles as necessary, work in a multi-disciplinary work environment, understand the full range of documents associated with complex software products and present an advanced software engineering topic.

Units: 18

Prerequisites: Software Engineering (15-413) or special permission by the instructor.