Department of Computer Science

SDD - Latest News

To: Systems Design and Development

18/11/98   

1. Coursework Details will be given out at the end of the 2pm lecture this Thursday (19/11), and discussed in the 5pm lecture, but.....

2. The 5pm lecture will, in fact, start at 5.15 this week, as the room is being used for a public meeting which may overrun slightly.

3. We have only just got a list of registered students - a revised list of tutorial groups (and those not in tutorial groups) will follow.

4. KST students - help with programming:

        Buy from Computer Science Reception:

                Introduction to Borland Delphi  Event-Driven Programming  1COM0014  Semester A lecture notes  £1

                Introduction to Borland Delphi  Event-Driven Programming  1COM0014  Semester A lecture notes 
                    and practical exercises £1.50

            These provide some theory and a series of do-it-yourself exercises, used by KST1 students on their
            programming course this year.  The exercises are labelled with a week number, and there are two lectures
            a week, so practical exercises 1 go with lectures 1 and 2, practical exercises 2 go with lectures 3 and 4,
            etc.

5. Delphi material

Everyone will need a copy of:

    Introduction to Borland Delphi for CS2/CSP3/KST2  System Design and Development   £1.50.

This contains some of the same material as the CS1 booklet last year, plus much that wasn't in there that you will need (databases, etc).  It presumes you've done some procedural programming first, which is why KST students need items in 4, but CSP3 can make do with this.

20/11/98

UML CASE Tool available!
A 'lite' version of Rational Rose, the leading CASE tool for the Booch, OMT and UML notations, can be obtained from our FTP server on Bacon, the file being:

                       /pub/cs/sdd/rosestuded.zip

This is nearly 10 megabytes of zip file!  Appparently there is a limit on the number of classes you can have, but otherwise this is the complete version, as used by several members of staff, and (at least) one CD3 student to produce use case diagrams, object (class) models, state charts, sequence and collaboration diagrams, etc, so well worth a look.

23/11/98

Delphi 4 Professional   Student Version
We have been informed by a student taking this course that students can get a copy of Delphi 4 Professional for £71.  The only difference between this and the full version is (apparently) that it doesn't come in a fancy box with manuals (but the documentation is either in Delphi Help or on the Web anyway).  Presumably there are License restrictions on what you can do with it. 
More information from Inprise-dealer on 01974 200201.

This is not meant to imply that you need your own copy of Delphi 4 to do the coursework.

15/1/99

Using UML - Software Engineering with Objects and Components by Pooley and Stevens is now in the bookshop.  This is a pretty readable description of the UML and how to use it, with some more general coverage of OO matters, both technical and managerial.  Most of the other books are either too technical, or misleading (UML as the added ingredient in a book on something else entirely!), or both.   This manages to be at the right level of detail, and be realistic (even critical) about what UML can do.

5/4/99

Our version of (the hard part of) the Willowbank Database is available from the ftp site as  

    /pub/cs/sdd/wbdb.zip

You will need to have a good look at the documentation after you've unzipped it.   Ask Mick if you don't understand what to do with it.

 

The Delphi program described in the lecture on Program Design Issues for Interactive Systems  is available (in a self-extracting archive) from

    /pub/cs/sdd/ui_design_demo.exe