Engr 691-09: Special Topics in Engineering Science
Software Architecture
Spring Semester 1998
Syllabus

Locations

The spring semester 1998 class meets in 351 Weir Hall from 1:00 p.m. to 2:15 on Tuesday and Thursday.

The class is taught by Prof. Conrad Cunningham, whose office is 312 Weir Hall. Prof. Cunningham's official office hours for this semester are 10:00 a.m. until Noon on Monday and Wednesday by appointment at other times.

Prof. Cunningham's voice telephone number is (601) 232-5358 and fax number is (601) 232-5623. His WWW home page is http://www.cs.olemiss.edu/~hcc/ and his email address is cunningham@cs.olemiss.edu (send).

The WWW home page for this class is http://www.cs.olemiss.edu/~hcc/engr691/.

The final examination for this class is scheduled for 8:00 am. until 11:00 on Friday, 8 May 1998.

Course Description

Shaw and Garland (textbook, page 1) state that "software architecture involves the description of elements from which systems are built, interactions among those elements, patterns that guide their composition, and constraints on these patterns."

This special topics course will examine various aspects of the architecture of software systems: concepts, styles (i.e., patterns or idioms), models, notations, methods, and tools.

Prerequisites

This special topics class has been designed primarily for students pursuing graduate degrees in computer science. The class is also open to other students who meet the prerequisite requirements.

The primary prerequisite for this course is completion of the course on Object-Oriented Design and Programming that Prof. Cunningham taught during the fall semester (CSCI 581, Section 01) or the equivalent. Other students with appropriate backgrounds may be admitted with the permission of the instructor; such students may find extra work necessary (e.g., learning Java and object-oriented techniques).

Source Materials

Required Textbook:

Mary Shaw and David Garlan. Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline,
Prentice-Hall, 1996.

Optional reference book: (Best not to buy until after class meets)

Robert Englander. Developing Java Beans, O'Reilly Associates, 1997.

Readings:

Several journal and conference articles, research reports, and other materials as appropriate.

Course Topics (tentative)

The actual topics and their order will be refined as the semester progresses.

• Perspectives on software architecture
• Higher order functions and generics the Pizza language (extended Java)
• Class library design
• Application frameworks
• Architectural and design patterns:
  • data abstraction
  • layers
  • pipes and filters (e.g., Unix pipes)
  • repositories (e.g., blackboards)
  • brokers (e.g., CORBA, WWW)
  • event-based systems (e.g., Java AWT event system)
  • model-view-controller (e.g., Java Swing API)
  • etc.
• Component frameworks (e.g., Java Beans)
• Architecture description languages
• Technologies
  • Java AWT
  • Java Beans
  • Java Swing API
  • CORBA
  • Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI)
  • XML
  • etc.

School of Engineering Honor Code

All students in ENGR 664 are expected to conduct themselves according to the Honor Code of the School of Engineering at the University of Mississippi.

The Honor Code shall apply to all students, both undergraduate and graduate, registered in and/or seeking degrees through the School of Engineering. The Honor Code shall be understood to apply to all academic areas of the School such as examinations, quizzes, laboratory reports, themes, computer programs, homework, and other possible assignments. Only that work explicitly identified by the class instructor not to be under the Honor Code is excluded. The intent of the Honor Code is to recognize professional conduct and, thus, it shall be deemed a violation of the Honor Code to knowingly deceive, copy, paraphrase, or otherwise misrepresent your work in a manner inconsistent with professional conduct.

Grading

My grading scale is A [90..100], B [80..90), C [70..80), D [60..70), and F [0..60).

Breakdown: 50% for examinations, 50% for homeworks and projects.

Note: I am considering giving the homeworks and projects more weight. More on that later.

Assignments

• All students are expected to study the relevant portions of the textbook and handouts in conjunction with our class discussions.
• There will be several individual assignments. Some will involve programming; others will not. Plagiarism and cheating will not be tolerated.
• All students are expected to complete their homework assignments by their due dates. (Late homework papers might be accepted for a few days after the due date, but grade penalties will increase daily. No homework will be accepted after the final examination period.)
• The projects will be carried out in small groups. One of these might involve presentation of a week's worth of material to the class on some aspect of software architecture or related software technology. Another project may involve a significant programming effort.

Examinations

• I plan two examinations, a mid-term and a final. Both exams will be required.
• The exams may include both in-class and take-home components.
• Please do not ask to take the final exam at an earlier time than set for the entire class.

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