Overview

Contents of this page:

Course Objective
Conduct of the Project Course
Grading Policy
Pre-requisites
CS3215 vs CS3214
Planning for CS3215

Course Objective

The students will work through the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to complete a team project. Specific objectives are:

prepare students for industrial projects,
develop ability to work in group in a project of substantial size and complexity,
enhance project planning skills,
develop writing skills,
apply and consolidate what students have learned in these three programming courses: CS1101, CS1102 and CS2103,
follow the SDLC according to the "best software engineering practices",
develop a well-tested, production quality software system.

In this course, you will design and implement a tool called Static Program Analyzer (SPA). A detailed description of the problem, technical hints, SDLC for the project and project schedule will be given to you in the Project Handbook. Project stages include analysis and architectural design and three iterations in which you will develop SPA incrementally. The details of what you should deliver in each stage are described in five assignments that include analysis, architecture design and three development iterations. Assignment due dates mark project milestones. You will submit the final project report together with the last assignment.

You will develop a SPA in teams of 4-6 students. Each team will be further divided into two groups of 2-3 students. Each group will deliver a different subsystem of the SPA. These subsystems communicate through a non-trivial interface. While each group will have to complete an independent piece of work, groups in a team will have to communicate a lot to integrate their work and to get the SPA product right.

You will implement the project in C++.

Grading Policy

All team members are expected to equally contribute to the project. At the end of the project, we shall ask each team member to evaluate contributions of other members of his/her team. The final grade for the course will be computed as follows:

20% - assignments 1, 2, 3 and 4
80% - final project report and demo of your program

The first 4 assignments will be given 5, 4 or 0 marks based on the following criteria:

5 marks - if you submit a reasonable assignment solution on the due date; you will not be punished for errors or if your work does not fully cover the scope of the assignment, provided this is not due to negligence; if you get on track later, you still stand a chance to get the highest grade at the end.
4 marks - if your work is at the very low end of being reasonable with respect to what was expected.
0 marks - if you submit the assignment late without valid reason, or if your work is not reasonable with respect to what was expected, or if you got 4 marks in the last assignment and you did not put enough effort to improve.

Evaluating and grading the project:

we expect at least:

implementation of functionality as described in assignments
reliability: programs must pass our test benchmark
high quality of documentation and report
flexibility and reusability

query examples in assignments 3-5 show how you should be implementing PQL incrementally, gradually increasing the complexity of your query evaluator. But to qualify for a mark above B, your final SPA should be able to handle all kinds of queries within the scope of the grammar specified in the handbook.
to get A or A+ students should:

demonstrate some degree of innovation in terms of PQL features, design solutions, query evaluation strategy
demonstrate maturity of skills in areas of team work, design, incremental development, approach to testing etc.

We take into account all the above factors, not only functionality implemented, in the evaluation of project achievements and in grading the project.

Policy on Project Work

You are permitted to discuss the project with anyone.
Solutions you hand in should be your own work
- coding and documentation should be the work of your team only.
You may not view any code and document written for CS3215 by anyone not in your team, including past students.
You may not reveal your code and document to any students not in your team.
Any case of academic misconduct will be prosecuted to the fullest extent provided for by University regulations.

Pre-requisites

Completed CS2103.

CS3215 vs CS3214

CS3215 and CS3214 are similar in that both are project courses, based on team development of a software system, following a rigorous SDLC. The two courses differ in the type of the software system students develop and in the details of the corresponding SDLC. In this course (CS3215), you will develop a software tool, with much emphasis on architecture, complex design problems, data structures, algorithms and incremental development. In CS3214, you will develop a business information system, with much emphasis on requirement analysis, user interface design and database design. CS3215 is suitable for students with interest in Computer Science, while CS3214 is suitable for students with interest in business Information Systems.

Planning for CS3215

Because of the heavy workload in this course, in the term you take CS3215, your are advised to take only THREE other courses. Particularly, you should avoid taking courses that involve a lot of practicals in the term you take CS3215.