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Database Management Systems, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 15 – Advanced Database Management Systems

August 4, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about database design?

Database is the heart of any software systems, especially enterprise systems. A bad database design will eventually cause your system fail. Designing enterprise databases requires a lot of specific enterprise knowledge and in-depth understanding of the design of database system. That’s why you need to learn about advanced database design.

What can I do after finishing learning about database design?

You will know WHEN you should use a relational database management system or WHEN you should use a NoSQL database management system and HOW a database system works INTERNALLY.

You will be able to design databases for scalable and high availability software systems also.

That sounds useful! What should I do now?

After that please read this Abraham Silberschatz et al. (2019). Database System Concepts. McGraw-Hill Education book to learn about database system concepts.

After that please read
– this Martin Kleppmann (2017). Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Alex Petrov (2019). Database Internals. O’Reilly Media book to learn how to design distributed databases and how distributed databases work.

Terminology Review:

Database’s Files.
Storage Manager.
Database’s Pages vs. Hardware Pages vs. OS Pages.
Page Storage Architecture: Heap Files, Tree Files, Sequential / Sorted File Organization (ISAM), Hashing Files.
Page Directory.
Page Header.
Slotted Pages.
Tuple Layout.
Tuple Header.
Tuple Data.
Record Identifiers.
Log-Structured Storage: MemTable, SSTables, Compaction.
Index-Organized Storage.
Tuple Storage.
Word-Aligned Tuples.
Data Representation: Variable-Precision Numeric Type, Null Data Type, Large Values, Overflow Pages.
System Catalogs.
N-ary Storage Model (NSM).
Decomposition Storage Model (DSM).
Partition Attributes Across (PAX) Storage Model.
Columnar Compression: Run-Length Encoding (RLE), Bit-Packing Encoding, Bitmap Encoding, Delta Encoding, Dictionary Encoding.
Data-Intensive Applications.
Graph Databases.
Distributed Databases.
Distributed Relational Databases.

After finishing the books please click Topic 16 – Advanced Software Design to continue.

Software Engineering Curriculum, Software Project Management

Topic 14 – Software Project Management

July 16, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about software project management?

Knowing how to create software does not mean that you will create software SUCCESSFULLY. Creating software successfully means that you satisfy all customer’s REQUIREMENTS ON TIME, ON BUDGET with HIGH QUALITY while making both the customer and yourself HAPPY. Especially, your software must create REVENUE for the customer.

Have you ever wondered why many software projects failed; why Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Apple, Amazon and IBM abandoned many projects? Software project management will provide you knowledge so that you could improve the success probability of your software projects and mitigate all the project risks.

What can I do after finishing learning about software project management?

You will know how to plan a project, including scoping, estimating time and resources, creating a schedule or an adaptive release plan, identifying and responding to risks.

You will know how to create software using the mindset of a specific methodology (i.e. Waterfall, Rational Unified Process, Iterative and Incremental Development, Agile Methods, Scrum, Extreme Programming, Kanban, PMI, PRINCE2).

You will know how to perform project configuration management, how to combine development and operations to release software faster, how to control project changes, how to report project status, how to control product and process quality.

You will know how to collaborate with others to create software, how to motivate your team members.

Uh-oh! I am a developer. I do not want to be a project manager. Do I really need to know about project management?

If you have a doubt about the usefulness of project management knowledge then just review the situations below. If you can overcome all of them then congratulation, you already have enough project management knowledge that a developer needs.

– You are asked by your manager when you can finish your tasks. Unfortunately, the tasks are new to you. The requirements are vague. It is even worse that you have not found technical solutions for them.

– You are required to finish a task requiring a collaboration with other team members. Conflicts arise frequently. You do not want to work with them anymore but you still have to complete the task.

– You cannot complete a task on time due to many incidents.

– You are given only a project idea and asked to create a product. The difficulty is that you do not know where to start.

– Most of your projects cannot be complete on time and on budget and you do not know what are the root cases.

– Most of your customers do not want to partner with your team again although their projects were finished on time with high quality by your team.

Alright! What should I do now?

Software project management requires a lot of reading. In order to get familiar with software project management concepts please read this Jennifer Greene and Andrew Stellman (2005). Applied Software Project Management. O’Reilly book.

After that please read this Steve McConnell (2006). Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art. Microsoft Press book to learn how to estimate effort, time and cost for a software project.

After that please read
– this Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. (1995). The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley Professional book to learn the timeless principles of software project management, and
– this Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister (2013). Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Zachary Wong (2007). Human Factors in Project Management: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques for Inspiring Teamwork and Motivation. Jossey-Bass book
to learn how to deal with human side of project management.

After that please read this Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister (2003). Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risks On Software Projects. Dorset House book to learn how to deal with software project risks.

After that please read
– this Philippe Kruchten (2003). The Rational Unified Process: An Introduction. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Per Kroll and Philippe Kruchten (2003). The Rational Unified Process Made Easy: A Practitioner’s Guide to the RUP. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Scott W. Ambler et al. (2005). The Enterprise Unified Process – Extending the Rational Unified Process. Prentice Hall book
to learn how to develop software using a managed process.

After that please read
– this Eric Brechner (2015). Agile Project Management with Kanban. Microsoft Press book, and
– this David J. Anderson (2010). Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business. Blue Hole Press book to learn how to develop software using the Kanban method.

After that please read
– this Jessica Keyes (2004). Software Configuration Management. Auerbach Publications book to learn how to perform software configuration management, and
– this Len Bass, Ingo Weber and Liming Zhu (2015). DevOps: A Software Architect’s Perspective. Pearson Education book
to learn how to release software faster.

After that please read
– this Project Management Institute (2021). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. 7th Edition. Project Management Institute book, and
– this Kathy Schwalbe (2017). An Introduction to Project Management. 6th Edition. Schwalbe Publishing book to review the techniques developed by the Project Management Institute (PMI).

If you are interested in taking a PMP exam then please read
– this Kim Heldman (2018). PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide. Sybex book, and
– this Joseph Phillips (2018). PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide. McGraw-Hill Education book.

After that please read
– this Steve McConnell (1996). Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules. Microsoft Press book to review classical methods and techniques of software development, and
– this Murali K. Chemuturi and Thomas M. Cagley Jr. (2010). Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques. J. Ross Publishing book to review approaches to software project management, especially when organizational-level processes and practices establish a platform on which a software project is managed. The information in these 2 books may help you in some specific situations.

Terminology Review:

Project Initiation
Scope Management
Agile Requirements
Waterfall
Rational Unified Process (RUP)
Enterprise Unified Process
Agile Methods
Extreme Programming (XP)
Scrum
Kanban
Work-in-Progress (WIP)
Software Estimation
Agile Estimating
Project Planning
Gantt Chart
Cost Management
Agile Planning
Configuration Management
CI/CD/DevOps
Project Monitoring and Control
Time Management
Peopleware
Team Management
Team Motivation
Software Quality
Agile Retrospectives
Quality Management
Risk Management
Software Project Management
Software Process
Project Management Professional (PMP)
CMMI

After finishing learning this topic please click Topic 15 – Advanced Database Management Systems to continue.

Software Design, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 13 – Introduction to Software Design

July 13, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about software design?

What will you do if you are asked to build a house?
You will need to sketch its first and build the house based upon the sketch. Otherwise you may build a house that may collapse in a few weeks or cannot be decorated due to errors.

The situation is similar when you create software. You need to plan how you will build it first by deciding how many components and objects will be used for constructing to solve at least a core problem, what are their responsibility, how they work together, how data will be organized, how data will be flowed within these components, how users will interact with your application, how these components will be deployed.

Software design knowledge will guide you how to do these tasks.

What can I do after finishing learning software design?

You will know how to create a design for an application including static and dynamic structure, data organization, business processing workflows.

Is is really useful? I feel that you can write the code right after having requirements and I am able to refactor my code when needed.

That’s great if you can do it like that. You only need to learn about software design when

(i) you do not know how to write code for a feature or

(ii) you cannot refactor your code because only a small change breaks the whole application or

(iii) you need to write a software system together with 20 other developers and you do NOT know where to begin and how you will integrate results of all the developers into one solution or

(iv) you have a software system that could serve 20 users simultaneously very well but it stops responding when serving 2,000 users simultaneously and you do not know how to fix it.

Alright! What should I do now?

Software design requires a lot of reading. Each application type (enterprise systems, games, intelligent systems) require specific design knowledge. In this topic, we only focus on basic elements of software design.

In order to get familiar with software design please read
– this Grady Booch et al. (2005). The Unified Modeling Language User Guide. Addison Wesley Professional book, and
– this Craig Larman (2004). Applying UML And Patterns. 3rd Edition. Prentice Hall book, and
– this Robert C. Martin (2003). Agile Software Development – Principles, Patterns, and Practices. Pearson book in in parallel.

After that please read this Erich Gamma et al (1994). Design Patterns Elements Of Reusable Object Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley Professional book.
Please focus on the Motivation section of each pattern first. You can skip a pattern if the problem presented in the Motivation section is not relevant to your situation or does not interest you.

After that please read
– this Frank Buschmann et al. (1996). Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture: A System Of Patterns. John Wiley & Sons Ltd book, and
– this Deepak Alur, Dan Malks and John Crupi (2003). Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices And Design Strategies. Prentice Hall PTR book, and
– this Martin Fowler et al. (2002). Patterns Of Enterprise Application Architecture. Addison Wesley book.

After that please read
– this Meilir Page-Jones (1988). The Practical Guide to Structured Systems Design. Pearson Education book, and
– this Bertrand Meyer (1997). Object-Oriented Software Construction. Prentice Hall book, and
– this Grady Booch et al. (2007). Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications. Pearson book, and
– this David Budgen (2003). Software Design. Pearson book and this David Budgen (2020). Software Design. CRC Press book
to learn how to design software systematically.

After that please read this Robert C. Martin (2017). Clean Architecture: A Craftsman’s Guide to Software Structure and Design. Pearson Education book to learn how to create a real world architecture for an enterprise system.

After that please read
– this Len Bass, Paul Clements and Rick Kazman (2021). Software Architecture in Practice. Addison-Wesley book to review software architecture aspects, and
– this Paul Clements et al. (2010). Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond. Pearson book to learn how to document an architecture so that it can be used for communication, software construction and maintenance, and
– this Humberto Cervantes and Rick Kazman (2016). Designing Software Architectures: A Practical Approach. Addison-Wesley Professional book to learn how to create an architecture systematically, and
– this Nick Rozanski and Eoin Woods (2012). Software Systems Architecture: Working with Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives. Addison-Wesley Professional book to learn how to apply theory to create an architecture systematically in real world, and
– this Simon Brown (2019). Software Architecture for Developers – Volume 2. 2 – Visualise, Document and Explore Your Software Architecture. Leanpub. book to learn how to document an architecture for agile projects.

Terminology Review:

Software Design.
Design Inputs and Outputs.
Design Notations.
User Interface Design.
Database Design.
Data Structure Design.
Algorithm Design.
Object-Oriented Design.
Architectures.
Architecture Design.
Architectural Styles.
Architectural Patterns.
Design Patterns.
Modeling vs. Designing.
Analysis Models vs. Design Models.
Design Phases.
Design Timing.
Design Methods.
“Good” Design: Modularity, Information Hiding, Data Encapsulation, Low Coupling, High Cohesion.
UML.
Use Case Diagrams.
Class Diagrams.
System Sequence Diagrams.
Sequence Diagrams.
Communication Diagrams.
Activity Diagrams.
State Diagrams.
Static Structure.
Dynamic Structure.
Design Principles.
SOLID Principles.
Cohesion.
Coupling.
Design Patterns.
Software Architecture.
Architecture Qualities.
Package Diagrams.
Component Diagrams.
Deployment Diagrams.
Architectural View.
Architectural Viewpoint.
The C4 Model.
Architecture Patterns.
Enterprise Patterns.
Row Data Gateway.
Active Record.
Data Mapper.
Table Data Gateway.
Table Module.
Transaction Script.
Domain Models.
Structured Design.

After finishing learning this topic please click Topic 14 – Software Project Management to continue.

Software Engineering Curriculum, Software Testing

Topic 12 – Software Testing

July 13, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about software testing?

Just image that a user installs your application, opens it and “BOOM!”, it crashes. Is it good? In the worst case scenario, your software operating an airplane suddenly hangs up while the airplane is still flying in the sky. Can you image what may happen? How do you ensure that your application solves your customer’s problems? How do you know if your software meets its users’ requirements? How do you give your users’ confidence about the correctness, reliability and security of your software? In order to answer these questions adequately you need to learn about software testing.

What can I do after finishing learning software testing?

You will know how to design and write a test case, how to prepare test data, how to test software structurally and correctly, how to automate testing tasks, how to report bugs.

I am a programmer. I am not a tester. Do I really need to know how to test software?

Many application capabilities must be tested by a programmer. Many software testing tasks can only be done by a programmer. Therefore you have to master software testing knowledge.

Alright! What should I do now?

Please read
– this Cem Kaner et al. (1999). Testing Computer Software. 2nd Edition. Wiley book and
– this Lee Copeland (2004). A Practitioner’s Guide to Software Test Design. Artech House book, and
– this Chaminda Chandrasekara and Pushpa Herath (2019). Hands-On Functional Test Automation: With Visual Studio 2017 and Selenium. Apress book, and
– this Arnon Axelrod (2018). Complete Guide to Test Automation: Techniques, Practices, and Patterns for Building and Maintaining Effective Software Projects. Apress book.

Terminology Review:

Test Cases.
Test Coverage.
Test Reports.
Bug Tracking Systems.
Black Box Testing.
White Box Testing.
Performance Testing.
Acceptance Testing.
Inspection.
Automated Testing.
Test Automation.

After finishing learning about software testing please click Topic 13 – Introduction to Software Design to continue.

Software Construction, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 11 – Software Construction

July 13, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about software construction?

Knowing how to write code does not mean that you know how to create real-world software.

In real world projects, you will need to know how to manage your code, how to read the existing code, how to write code following standard styles, how to ensure that your code is working, how to automate your the process of building, testing and deploying your code, how to handle errors in your application, how to optimize your code for better speed, how to write secure code, how to avoid code duplication, how to create readable code, how to create code faster.

That’s why you need to learn about software construction.

What can I do after finishing learning software construction?

You will know how to create real world software with a team.

Hmm! Is it really useful?

If you doubt its usefulness then you can delay learning it until you are tasked to create a software system and you complete a half of it and are stuck there because when you add one more feature you will get tons of bugs due to the new code, or when you finish fixing 1 bug, you get 3 other bugs due to the code modification.

An other scenario is when it takes another person 2 weeks to read 1000 lines of the code that you wrote in order to fix a bug or to add a new feature because your code is unstructured.

Another scenario is when you are asked to improve some existing code for better performance or to refactor some code for clarity before adding a new feature but you do not know how to accomplish the task.

Alright! What should I do now?

Software construction requires a lot of reading. In order to get familiar with software construction you will need to read at least below books. Please read this Steve McConnell (2004). Code Complete. Microsoft Press book first.

After that please read this Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough (2012). Version Control with Git: Powerful Tools and Techniques for Collaborative Software Development. O’Reilly Media book.

Alternatively, you can read this Ben Collins-Sussman et al. (2011). Version Control with Subversion book.

After that please read this Paul M. Duvall et al. (2007). Continuous Integration Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk. Addison-Wesley book.

After that please read this Robert C. Martin (2009). Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Pearson Education book.

After that please read
– this Andy Hunt, Dave Thomas and Matt Hargett (2007). Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit. Pragmatic Bookshelf book, and
– this Kent Beck (2002). Test Driven Development: By Example. Addison Wesley book.

After that please read
– this Martin Fowler et al. (1999). Refactoring Improving The Design Of Existing Code. Addison Wesley book, and
– its newer version Martin Fowler (2019). Refactoring. Improving the Design of Existing Code. 2nd Edition. Addison-Wesley Professional also.

If you have to work with legacy code then please read
– this Michael Feathers (2004). Working Effectively with Legacy Code. Prentice Hall PTR book, and
– this Diomidis Spinellis et al. (2003). Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective. Addison-Wesley Professional book.

After that if you are familiar with .NET then please read
– this Matthew MacDonald and Bill Hamilton (2003). ADO.NET in a Nutshell. O’Reilly Media book to learn how to use a data provider to access data sources, and
– this Brian L. Gorman (2020). Practical Entity Framework. Apress book to learn how to use an ORM to access data sources, and
– this Suhas Chatekar (2015). Learning NHibernate 4. Packt Publishing book to learn how to use an ORM with mapping technique to access data sources, and
– this Brian Larson (2017). Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Reporting Services. McGraw-Hill Education book to learn how to use a reporting system, and
– this Justin Richer and Antonio Sanso (2017). OAuth 2 in Action. Manning Publications book to learn how to use authentication and authorization frameworks and libraries, and
– this Matt Perdeck (2010). ASP.NET Site Performance Secrets. Packt Publishing book to learn how to reduce a web application response time.

After that please read
– this Elton Stoneman (2020). Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches. Manning Publications book, and
– this Elton Stoneman (2021). Learn Kubernetes in a Month of Lunches. Manning Publications book. You should learn basic concepts, then try exploring the tool using official documentation if you get any issue with example code in the book.

After that please read this Yevgeniy Brikman (2022). Terraform – Up and Running. O’Reilly Media book.

Terminology Review:

Version Control.
Coding Standards.
Unit Tests.
Continuous Integration.
Refactoring.
Legacy Code.
Code Reading.
Data Providers.
Object/Relational Mapping (ORM).
Reporting Services.
Authentication.
Authorization.
OAuth 2.
Proof Key for Code Exchange (PKCE).
JSON Web Token (JWT).
OpenID Connect (OIDC).
The Backend for Frontend Pattern.
Performance.
Containers.
Container Images.
Container Image Layers.
Docker.
Docker CLI.
Dockerfiles.
Docker Volumes.
Bind Mounts.
Docker Compose.
Container Orchestrator.
Swarm.
Kubernetes.
Deployments.
ReplicaSets.
Pods.
Deployment Manifest.
ClusterIP Services.
LoadBalancer Services.
NodePort Services.
ExternalName Services.
headless Services.
Namespaces.

After finishing learning about software construction please click Topic 12 – Software Testing to continue.

Software Engineering Curriculum, Software Requirements

Topic 10 – Software Requirements

July 13, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about software requirements?

Your software can only be successful if it helps people do their work better, faster, with lower cost. In order to achieve this objective, it must fulfill the need of various users. In order to fulfill users’ needs you need to be able to identify their context, problems and needs, then propose software solutions for their issues.

Your software solutions must be built based on its users’ requirements that help them solve their problems. So you need to be able to collect, document, manage and validate their requirements. Software requirements engineering will provide you knowledge for completing these tasks.

Do not waste your time to create software that NO ONE will use. Your software will only become useful if its requirements are correctly engineered.

What can I do after finishing learning software requirements engineering?

You will know how to elicit, document, manage and validate software requirements so that they can be used for creating your software.

Hmm! Is it really useful?

If you still have a doubt about its usefulness then you can delay learning about software requirements until you are tasked to create a software system but you do not know where to begin or what are the inputs for your coding.

Another scenario that may suggest that you should come back to this topic is when you create a software system but unfortunately you find that no one wants to use it.

Alright! What should I do now?

Please read
– this Suzanne Robertson and James Robertson (2012). Mastering the Requirements Process. Addison Wesley Professional book to learn how to develop enterprise software requirements step by step, and
– this Karl Wiegers and Joy Beatty (2013). Software Requirements. Microsoft Press book to learn about techniques for engineering software requirements.

After that please read this Joy Beatty and Anthony Chen (2012). Visual Models for Software Requirements. Microsoft Press book to learn how to use models for representing software requirements.

After that, please read this Alistair Cockburn (2001). Writing Effective Use Cases. Addison-Wesley book to learn how to write use cases effectively.

Then please review this ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148:2011(E) standard so that you could create a quality software requirements specification for projects require high formal specification.

After that please read this Mike Cohn (2004). User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development. Addison-Wesley Professional book.

After that please read this Jeff Patton and Peter Economy (2014). User Story Mapping. O’Reilly Media book.

After that please read this Dean Leffingwell (2011). Agile Software Requirements. Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley Professional book.

After that please read this Project Management Institute (2015). Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide. Project Management Institute book.

Terminology Review:

Business Requirements.
Stakeholders.
Sponsors.
Customers.
Users.
Business Analysts.
Terminologies, Terms.
Problems.
Business Goals.
Evaluator Pitch.
Work Context Diagrams.
Executive Summary.
User Requirements.
Glossary.
Business Rules.
Business Use Cases.
Scenarios, Business Workflows, Business Processes.
Storyboards.
Process Flows.
Activity Diagrams.
Swimlane Diagrams.
The Brown Cow Model.
Business Rules.
Domain Models.
Business Data.
Entity Relationship Diagrams.
Data Flow Diagrams.
State Models.
Features.
Project Vision.
Software Requirements.
Functional Requirements.
Use Cases.
Non-Functional Requirements.
Software Requirements Specification.
User Stories.
Business Values.
Story Map.
Product Backlog.
User-Interface Prototypes.
User Interface Flow Diagrams.
ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148:2011(E).

After finishing learning about software requirements please click Topic 11 – Software Construction to continue.

Android Programming, iOS Programming

Topic 9 – Introduction to Mobile Application Development

July 12, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about mobile application development?

Desktop applications are very useful but their deployment and updating are daunting. Web applications overcome many limitations but you still need a workstation to work with it. This is often a PC or MAC that is too large and heavy to bring on-the-go.

Nowadays most of us always bring a mobile device with us everywhere. It’s very convenient if we could use our daily software inside our mobile devices. In order to leverage our mobile devices we need to develop software for them.
Therefore you need to learn mobile programming.

What can I do after finishing learning mobile programming?

You can create applications like WhatsApp, Instagram or games like Temple Run, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninjia.

How interesting! What should I do now?

Mobile programming requires a lot of reading. You have to master at least a programming language and a mobile platform. Currently, there are 2 major platforms for mobile development: Android and iOS. There are 3 options for developing a mobile application:
– native Android application or
– native iOS application or
– hybrid mobile application.

The first option for learning mobile programming is Android programming.
If you are not familiar with Kotlin language, please read this Josh Skeen and David Greenhalgh (2018). Kotlin Programming – The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. Pearson Education book first.

After that please read this Bill Phillips et al. (2019). Android Programming – The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. Big Nerd Ranch Guides book.

After that please read
– this Cay S. Horstmann (2019). Core Java. Volume I – Fundamentals. Pearson book, and
– this Cay S. Horstmann (2019). Core Java. Volume II – Advanced Features. Pearson book.

The second option for learning mobile application development is iOS programming.
Please read
– this Mikey Ward (2020). Swift Programming – The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. Big Nerd Ranch book or
– this Matt Neuburg (2021). iOS 14 Programming Fundamentals with Swift. O’Reilly Media book first.

After that please read
– this Christian Keur and Aaron Hillegass (2020). iOS Programming – The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. Big Nerd Ranch book or
– this Jonathon Manning et al. (2018). Learning Swift – Building Apps for macOS, iOS, and Beyond. O’Reilly Media book.

A complementary part of this option is Objective-C. Please read
– this Stephan G. Kochan (2014). Programming in Objective-C. 6th Edition. Addison-Wesley book or
– this Neil Smyth (2012). Objective-C 2.0 Essentials book.

The third option for developing mobile applications is

(i) to leverage C# language and the Xamarin framework; please read this Charles Petzold (2016). Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms book; or

(ii) to leverage HTML/CSS/Javascript language and the Ionic framework; please read this Jeremy Wilken (2015). Ionic in Action: Hybrid Mobile Apps with Ionic and AngularJS book; or

(iii) to leverage HTML/CSS/Javascript language and the React Native framework; please read this Alex Banks and Eve Porcello (2020). Learning React Modern Patterns for Developing React Apps. O’Reilly book; then read this Bonnie Eisenman (2016). Learning React Native: Building Native Mobile Apps with JavaScript book; or

(iv) to leverage Dart language and the Flutter framework; please read this Priyanka Tyagi (2021). Pragmatic Flutter. CRC Press book.

Mobile is a great environment for games because of its mobility. If you are interested in developing games for Android please read this Jayme Schroeder and Brian Broyles (2013). AndEngine for Android Game Development Cookbook book.

If you already have a background of C or C++ and want to develop games for both Android and iOS then please read
– this Roger Engelbert (2015). Cocos2d-x by Example: Beginner’s Guide book or
– this Raydelto Hernandez (2015). Building Android Games with Cocos2d-x book.

It seems that there are a lot of topics to learn. I am totally new to mobile programming. What are the only essential knowledge should I learn in order to reduce my learning time?

You could focus on these topics first?

– How to install necessary tools and create a Hello World application?

– What is the physical structure of a project and how to build it using both IDE and command line?

– How to deploy an application to Play Store or App Store?

– How to create UIs, transfer data between UIs, compose new UI using existing UIs using SDK features or frameworks?

– How to use built-in or 3rd party libraries to interact with camera, microphone, media player, GPS device, local files, local databases, external databases and external services.

– How to call native code libraries to improve performance or access low-level features.

Terminology Review:

Android.
iOS.
Native Apps.
Hybrid Apps.
Build Tools.
Views.
Controls.
Layouts.
Game Programming.
Game Development.
Native Development Kit.
Google Play Console.
App Store Connect.

After finishing learning about mobile application development please click Topic 10 – Software Requirements to continue.

Software Engineering Curriculum, Web Application Development

Topic 8 – Introduction to Web Application Development

July 2, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about web application development?

Desktop applications are very powerful and convenient but their development, deployment and maintenance are daunting.

The reason is that the platform dependency makes it very expensive to create a desktop application working on different versions of different operating systems, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Deployment and updates of desktop application typically require high privileges access to a computer machine, causing a problem for companies requiring high security.

Fortunately, you can overcome these limitations by creating a web application running on a browser. To create a web application you need to learn about web application development.

What can I do after finishing learning web application development?

You will be able to create web applications like The BBC News, The WordPress Blog or The White House Website.

This is exactly what I want to learn! What should I do now?

Web application development requires a lot of reading. You have to master networking concepts, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, a programming language and a database management system for web. Please read
– this Semmy Purewal (2014). Learning Web App Development. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Jon Duckett (2011). HTML & CSS – Design and Build Websites. John Wiley & Sons book first to get familiar with web application development.

After that please read
– this Stephen Greig (2013). CSS3 – Pushing the Limits. John Wiley & Sons book and
– this Anne Boehm and Zak Ruvalcaba (2018). Murach’s HTML5 and CSS3. Mike Murach and Associates book to learn in-depth about HTML and CSS.

JavaScript is the language for web development because it is implemented in most of the web browsers.
Please read
– this David Flanagan (2020). JavaScript: The Definitive Guide. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Kyle Simpson (2015). You Don’t Know JS. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Jon Duckett (2014). JavaScript and JQuery. Interactive Front-End Web Development. John Wiley & Sons book to master it.
Strong knowledge of JavaScript will ease your web development learning very much.

Single page application is the default front-end choice for most of new web development projects.
Please read
– this Kirupa Chinnathambi (2018). Learning React. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Alex Banks and Eve Porcello (2020). Learning React Modern Patterns for Developing React Apps. O’Reilly book to learn how to create a single page application (SPA).

After that you will have 4 main options. You can choose one of them. We STRONGLY recommend that you choose only ONE option.

You should NOT learn all of them at the beginning. You could save your time by digging into only one option. After mastering the selected technology, you will realize that all of them are very similar in the sense of use.

One note is that although their concepts are similar to one another but it still takes us much time to learn how to apply an approach to real world web application.

When developing a real world web application, you often use only one or two of these 4 approaches. If you cannot make your own selection then we recommend you
– a combination of the first and second option, or
– a combination of the first and third option, or
– a combination of the first and fourth option.

The first option is PHP world. Please read
– this Luke Welling and Laura Thomson (2016). PHP and MySQL Web Development. Addison-Wesley Professional book or
– this Robin Nixon (2021). Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript. O’Reilly book.
After that depending on your projects you may need to read the books below
– Brad Williams et al. (2015). Professional WordPress: Design and Development. Wrox.

The second option is ASP.NET.
Please read
– this Adam Freeman (2020). Pro ASP.NET Core 3: Develop Cloud-Ready Web Applications Using MVC, Blazor, and Razor Pages. Apress book and
– this Andrew Lock (2021). ASP.NET Core in Action. Manning book.

A complementary part for this option is ASP.NET Web Forms that is a technology that you need to master if you are maintaining a legacy project.
Please read this Imar Spaanjaars (2014). Beginning ASP.NET 4.5.1 in C# and VB. Wrox book to learn about ASP.NET Web Forms.

The third option is Java world.
If you are not familiar with Java language then please read
– this Cay S. Horstmann (2019). Core Java. Volume I – Fundamentals. Pearson book, and
– this Cay S. Horstmann (2019). Core Java. Volume II – Advanced Features. Pearson book first.

Then please read
– this Tim Downey (2021). Guide to Web Development with Java – Understanding Website Creation. Springer book or
– this Nicholas S. Williams (2014). Professional Java for Web Applications. John Wiley & Sons book.

After that please read this Mark Heckler (2021). Spring Boot – Up and Running – Building Cloud Native Java and Kotlin Applications. O’Reilly Media book.

The 4th option is Node.js world.
Please read
– this Jonathan Wexler (2019). Get Programming with Node.js. Manning Publications book, and
– this Bruno Joseph D’mello et al. (2017). Web Development with MongoDB and Node. Packt Publishing book.

There are also several other options that you may consider if you are required to learn them for a maintenance project.
These options include
– Ruby on Rails, please read this Michael Hartl (2020). The Ruby on Rails Tutorial. Addison-Wesley Professional book,
– Flask, please read this Miguel Grinberg (2018). Flask Web Development: Developing Web Applications with Python. O’Reilly Media book, and
– Django.

If you need to convert a web application from one platform to another or create a web application framework then please read
– this Leon Shklar and Richard Rosen (2009). Web Application Architecture. John Wiley & Sons book, and
– this Leonard Richardson and Mike Amundsen (2013). RESTful Web APIs. O’Reilly Media book.

Terminology Review:

Networking
HTTP
HTML
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
CGI
Web Applications
Multiple Page Application
Single-Page Application (SPA)
RESTful APIs
gRPC APIs
GraphQL APIs
XML
SOAP APIs
Web Application Frameworks
Portal Frameworks
Content Management System (CMS)
Payment Gateways

After finishing learning about web application development please click Topic 9 – Introduction to Mobile Application Development to continue.

Database Management Systems, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 7 – Introduction to Database Management Systems

July 2, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about database management systems?

Your software must help users to do their work. The most important part of the users’ work is the information. You need to learn about database management systems to store, manipulate, retrieve and secure this information.

What can I do after finishing learning database management systems?

You can design and implement database part for software systems. These systems may include airlines and railways, banking, education, telecommunications, digital libraries and digital publishing, finance, sales, health care information systems, e-commerce system, content management system.

You will also know how to build a data warehouse. You will know how to design a relational database and write SQL code PROPERLY (i.e. for specific purposes) too.

It sounds interesting! What should I do now?

Learning about database management systems requires a lot of effort. First you need to learn how to use database management systems.

Please read
– this Ignatius Fernandez (2015). Beginning Oracle Database 12c Administration: From Novice to Professional. Apress book, or
– this Adam Jorgensen et al. (2012). Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible. Wiley book, or
– this Vinicius M. Grippa and Sergey Kuzmichev (2021). Learning MySQL. O’Reilly Media book, or
– this Regina O. Obe and Leo S. Hsu (2017). PostgreSQL Up and Running. O’Reilly Media book.

After that please read this Stephane Faroult and Peter Robson (2006). The Art of SQL. O’Reilly Media book first to learn how to write SQL code efficiently.

After that please read
– this C. J. Date (2019). Database Design and Relational Theory: Normal Forms And All That Jazz. Apress book and
– this C. J. Date (2015). SQL and Relational Theory: How to Write Accurate SQL Code. O’Reilly Media book to learn about normal forms and relational theory behind relational databases for creating more efficient logical designs for your databases.

After that please read
– this W.H. Inmon (2003). Building The Data Warehouse. Wiley book and
– this Ralph Kimball and Margy Ross (2002). The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling. Wiley book and
– this Vincent Rainardi (2008). Building a Data Warehouse: With Examples in SQL Server. Apress book to learn how to build a data warehouse.

After that please read
– this Pramod J. Sadalage and Martin Fowler (2012). NoSQL Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Jeff Carpenter and Eben Hewitt (2022). Cassandra: The Definitive Guide: Distributed Data at Web Scale. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Bradshaw Shannon, Eoin Brazil and Kristina Chodorow (2019). MongoDB: The Definitive Guide: Powerful and Scalable Data Storage. 3rd Edition. O’Reilly Media book.

Terminology Review:

Databases.
Flat Files.
Database Management Systems.
Relational Databases.
(Oracle) Tablespaces, Datafiles, and Objects.
(Oracle) Databases, Instances, Schemas.
Tables, Rows, Columns, Primary Keys, Foreign Keys.
Normal Forms.
Relational Model: Relations, Tuples, Primary Keys, Foreign Keys, Constraints.
Data Manipulation Languages (DMLs): Relational
Algebra, Relational Calculus.
Relational Algebra: σ Select, π Projection, ∪ Union, ∩ Intersection, – Difference, × Product, ⋈ Join.
Data Models: Entity-Relationship (ER) Model, Relational Model, Object-Oriented Model, NoSQL Model.
Schemas.
Entity-Relationship Model.
SQL, TSQL.
Stored Procedures.
Functions.
Queries.
Aggregates (AVG, MIN, MAX, SUM, COUNT), ANY_VALUE, GROUP BY, HAVING, LIKE (Strings).
Output Redirection.
ORDER BY, ROW_NUMBER, RANK.
Subqueries.
Views.
Common Table Expressions.
Indexes.
Recovery.
Replication.
Data Warehouse.
Dimensional Modeling.
NoSQL.
Key-Value Databases.
Document Databases.
Column-Family Databases.
Graph Databases.
Array (Vector, Matrix, Tensor) Databases.

After finishing learning about database management systems please click Topic 8 – Introduction to Web Application Development to continue.

Desktop Application Development, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 6 – Introduction to Windows Programming

July 1, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Why do I need to learn about Windows programming?

Because Windows is the most popular OS and most companies use it for their daily work. So your software must run on Windows in order to help users do their work.

What can I do after finishing learning Windows programming?

You will know how to create Windows applications that are similar to Notepad, or Paint, or Calculator.

You could also create a dictionary application or an application for storing and searching for books.

It sounds interesting! What should I do now?

Windows programming is a very big topic. You need to master at least 3 specific technologies: Windows API, Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation.

Please read
– this Charles Petzold (1998). Programming Windows. Microsoft Press book, and
– this Jeffrey Richter (1999). Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Press book to learn about Windows APIs.

Please read this Chris Sells and Michael Weinhardt (2006). Windows Forms 2.0 programming. Addison-Wesley book to learn about Windows Forms.

Please read this Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths (2007). Programming WPF: Building Windows UI with Windows Presentation Foundation. O’Reilly Media book to learn about Windows Presentation Foundation.

Can I learn Java stuff instead of Microsoft stuff for Windows programming?

Yes, you can. However please remember that Microsoft is the one who created and has been developing Windows. Therefore we believe that the good approach for learning programming for Windows is to learn Microsoft technologies.

Can I create a desktop application that can run in Windows, macOS and Linux using one code base?

Yes, you can. Please consider Electron framework and Tauri toolkit.

Terminology Review:

Windows, Menus, Panels, Tabs.
Buttons, Text Boxes, Combo Boxes, Images, Trees.
Windows API.
Windows Forms.
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
Graphics Device Interface (GDI).
Dynamic-Link Library (DLL).
Processes.
Threads.
Shared Memory.
Windows Sockets 2 (Winsock).
Windows Services.
Office Add-ins.

After finishing the books please click Topic 7 – Introduction to Database Management Systems to continue.

Software development and software engineering research