UNIVERSITY OF MAURITIUS

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

FIRST SEMESTER EXAMINATIONS

NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2010

PROGRAMME BSc (Hons) Computer Applications (F/T)

BSc (Hons) Computer Science
BSc (Hons) Information Systems

MODULE NAME Software Engineering

DATE Wednesday
24 November 2010 MODULE CODE CSE 2142(3)

TIME 09.30 – 11.45 hrs DURATION 2 Hours +

(15 minutes Reading Time)

NO. OF 5 NO. OF QUESTIONS 4

QUESTIONS SET TO BE ATTEMPTED

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

There are 2 Sections in this paper: Section A and Section B.

Section A consists of a Case Study. Answer ALL questions from Section A.

Section B consists of 4 questions. Answer any 3 questions from Section B.

 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

SECTION A

Question 1

Please read carefully the Case Study which is about an Airline Reservation system
and answer the questions that follow.

“Little Paradise Flights” will like to implement an Airline Reservation system (ARS)
for its customers that will provide easy-to-use, interactive, and intuitive graphical
web interface. The following features shall be provided to the users - access to the
ARS to check the flight schedule, availability of seats, ticket price and to block,
reserve, cancel, and reschedule tickets. There are three databases internal to the
system. DB-user is the database containing all the personal information of the
registered users of the ARS. This can be updated by the user by logging in to the
system. DB-schedule is a copy of the flight schedule database. The latter exists
independently and is updated by a flight scheduler system which is out of scope of
the ARS. DB-schedule is updated with the latest status of the flight schedule
database whenever there is any change in the latter. DB-schedule also contains the
base prices of tickets for various flight numbers. DB-reservations are a database
containing information regarding the number of seats available on each class on
different flights. It has provision for marking how many of the reserved seats have
been blocked but not yet bought. DB-reservations should update itself using DB-
schedule, for example, if a new flight is added. DB-geography is a database, which
contains information about the cities and towns serviced by the airline. The distance
between all cities and towns is contained in a matrix form. There are two interfaces,
one for the administrator and one for the customer via web. The administrator can
update DB-schedule with any changes in the base prices of flight tickets. The system
uses a pricing algorithm and dynamically determines the actual price from this base
price depending on the date of reservation vis-à-vis date of departure. The system
will give notification of booking confirmation through e-mail and sms.

(continued next page)

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 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

(Question1 continued)

(a) Identify the principal viewpoints which might be taken into account in the
specification of this system and organize these using a viewpoint hierarchy
diagram.

[6 marks]

(b) For any interactor viewpoint identified in (a) suggest three functional and
three non-functional requirements that could be suggested by the
stakeholders associated with that viewpoint.

[6 marks]

(c) There are a number of checks that should be performed during the
requirement analysis phase, briefly describe three of them.
[3 marks]

(d) Give two reasons why it is almost inevitable that the requirements of different
stakeholders will conflict in some way.

[4 marks]

(e) Explain five problems that are encountered during the requirements
elicitation process.

[5 marks]

(f) One of the functionalities of the Airline Reservation System is to allow a

customer to check the flight schedule. Given that the customer has to logon to
access any services and that flight schedule can be viewed by typing in a
country’s name, the basic flow and possible alternative flows are as follows:

Basic flow:
1: Enter user credential
2: Enter country’s name
3: Flight schedules are displayed
Alternate flows:
A1: Wrong password
A2: User ID does not exist
A3: No flight schedule for that country
A4: Logout

(continued next page)

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 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

(Question1 continued)

(i) Reproduce the following scenario matrix and fill in the missing
information whenever required.

Scenario ID Starting flow First alternate Second alternate

1. Login ok with
existing flight
schedules for that
country

2. Incorrect
password

3. Login ok but no
existing flight
schedules for that
country and
logout

[4 marks]

(ii) Given that the data elements and conditions required to execute the
above scenarios are userid, password, country and logout, construct a
test case matrix for the above three scenarios. You are required to use
the table header below to populate your matrix.

Test Scenario/condition Userid Password Country Logout Expected result

case
ID
[6 marks]
(iii) Given that the only userid and password available for testing are ‘1234’
and ‘4321’ respectively and flight schedules exist for Singapore only.
Generate the values for the above test case matrix.

[6 marks]

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 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

SECTION B
Answer 3 questions from Section B.

Question 2

(a) SOFTDEV is an outsourcing software development company which develops

a wide range of application for many enterprises. For one of its project, it has
decided to use Incremental model.

(i) With the help of a diagram, explain the Incremental model

development life cycle.
[5 marks]

(ii) Describe two benefits derived from using this software process model.
[4 marks]

(b) A software development team has developed a prototype for an online

banking system for a client. After presentation of the prototype the client
suggests that he is very happy with it and suggests that there is no need to
develop the system.

(i) The client wants the prototype as final version for an excellent price.
Discuss whether it is advisable to give the prototype to the customer
instead of a full version of the system.
[5 marks]

(ii) In architectural design, system structuring is concerned with

decomposing the system into interacting sub-systems. Describe briefly
three models which may be used for system structuring.
[6 marks]

Question 3

(a) Software process and project metrics are quantitative measures which enable
software people to gain insight into the efficiency of the software process.
Differentiate between direct measures and indirect measures. Use examples to
elaborate your answer.
[2 + 2 marks]

(b) Describe three drawbacks of using lines of code (LOC) as a software metric to
measure size.
[3 marks]

(continued next page)

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 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

(Question3 continued)

(c) Using the details provided below compute the function points

Factors Weights

Simple Average Complex

Number of user inputs 2 3 5

Number of user outputs 3 4 6

Number of user inquiries 2 3 5

Number of files 6 9 14

Number of external interfaces 4 6 9

A system being developed has the following characteristics:

Number of user inputs 10 (simple)

Number of user outputs 7 (simple)

Number of user inquiries 3 (average)

Number of files 6 (average)

Number of external interfaces 1 (complex)

Assume that ∑(Fi) is 35.

[5 marks]

(d) Software is the most expensive element of virtually all computer-based

system. A large cost estimation error can make the difference between profit
and loss.

(i) Explain why software cost estimation is difficult. [2 marks]

(ii) List and briefly describe three techniques for estimating software cost.
[3 marks]

(iii) State one advantage and one disadvantage for each of the estimation
techniques you mentioned above. [3 marks]

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 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

Question 4
A project work must be broken down into discrete tasks that can then be estimated
and allocated appropriate resources. The following table outlines the necessary tasks
that must be performed for the NASA Spacecraft Launching Software Project.

TASK DESCRIPTION DURATION DEPENDENCIES

(DAYS)
T1 Concept document 10 None
T2 Project Plan 15 T1 (M1)
T3 Project Schedule 10 T1,T2 (M1,M2)
T4 Requirements Analysis 20 None
T5 Requirements Definition 10 None
T6 System Specification 15 T3, T4 (M3,M4)
T7 Requirements Validation 20 T3 (M3)
T8 Architectural Design 35 T7 (M7)
T9 Interface Design 15 T6 (M6)
T10 Detailed Design 5 T5, T9 (M5,M9)
T11 Coding 10 T9 (M9)
T12 Unit Testing 20 T10 (M10)
T13 Integration Testing 35 T3, T4 (M3,M4)
T14 System Testing 10 T8,T9 (M8,M9)
T15 Acceptance Testing 20 T12, T14 (M9,M12,M14)
T16 User Manual 10 T15 (M15)

(a) (i) Draw an Activity chart to show the project schedule. [6 marks]

(ii) Determine the duration of the project in number of days. [2 marks]

(iii) Identify all the activities on the critical path. [2 marks]

(b) (i) The Risk management process consists of four activities, explain each
of these. [4 marks]
(ii) A project team, in the process of creating a risk table, listed the
following risk.
• Delivery deadline will be tightened
• Less reuse than planned
• Staff inexperienced
• Customer will change requirement
• Size estimates may be significant low
• End user resist system
For each of them, identify the category of the risk to which each one of them
belongs. Justify for each of them, your reason for including it in the specific
category. [6 marks]
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 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

Question 5

(a) Read the pseudocode of the following module:

double fees (AccountDB acc, int acct_id){

//searching for the account that match with acc_id

get list of account, acct_list, from database eacc
for each account in acct_list
if (id of account matches with acct_id)
save position of match

//calculating the sum of fees to charge

if (there is a match)
//get list of transactions, trans_list, from account which matched
initialize fees to 0
for each transaction in trans_list
if (type of transaction is withdrawal)
increment fees by Rs 50
return (fees)
else
return (0.0)
}

(i) Define functional cohesion.

[2 marks]

(ii) With justifications, state whether the above function exhibits functional
cohesion.
[4 marks]

(iii) How would you modify the above function so as to achieve higher
cohesion.
[4 marks]

(b) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process improvement

approach consisting of five maturity levels (using the staged representation) that
helps organizations to improve their performance.

(i) Briefly describe the different levels of the CMMI model. [5 marks]

(ii) Give one benefit and one weakness of CMMI. [2 marks]

(iii) Discuss whether quality standards such as CMMI improve the

development process. [3 marks]

END OF QUESTION PAPER

/sg

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