Category Archives: Software Engineering Curriculum

Software Design, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 16 – Advanced Software Design

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Why do I need to learn about advanced software design?
I think that I already learned about software design in the Topic 13 – Introduction to Software Design.

Now your task is not just to build a house.  Your task is to build a city. Now you will create very complicated software. You are responsible for creating a software system containing about 10,000 classes or functions for 5,000 people to use in 15 years. The maximum system downtime must be less than 5 minutes per year.

Image that you have to create a system that serves millions of users simultaneously like Facebook or YouTube or Amazon or Office 365 or GMail. Are you comfortable with building one.

Image that you are tasked to create a web framework for developers to extend such as ASP.NET or Yii or React. Are you confident in creating one?

If you are not sure how to fulfill these tasks then probably, you should learn how other people crafted similar systems and adapt their experiences to your case. Advanced software design introduces knowledge and tools to you so that you can begin to build your own complicated software.

What can I do after finishing learning advanced software design?

You will know how to design a complex software system that satisfies not only functional requirements but also security, modifiability, scalability, reusability, extensibility and reliability requirements.

That sounds interesting! What should I do now?

Advanced software design requires a lot of reading. Please do review the software design knowledge introduced to you in the Topic 13 – Introduction to Software Design first.

Nowadays software can be applied to many fields. Each of them requires specific advanced software design knowledge. In this topic, we only focus on enterprise software due to its popularity.

Before you design a complicated system you must thoroughly  understand its sophisticated requirements. This is a critical step when building a large system.

Please read this David C. Hay (2002). Requirements Analysis: From Business Views to Architecture. Prentice Hall PTR book to learn how to elicit, analyze and document requirements for an enterprise system.

After that please read this Philip A. Bernstein and Eric Newcomer (2009). Principles of Transaction Processing. Second Edition. Morgan Kaufmann book to learn about transactional processing principles and techniques.

After that please read
– this Eric Evans (2003). Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software. Addison Wesley book, and
– this Jimmy Nilsson (2006). Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello (2014). Microsoft .NET: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise. Microsoft Press book, and
– this Vaughn Vernon (2013). Implementing Domain-Driven Design. Addison-Wesley Professional book to learn how to leverage domain-driven design approach to reduce system complexity.

After that please read
– this Mark Endrei et al. (2004). Patterns: Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services. IBM Corp book, and
– this Sam Newman (2021). Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems. O’Reilly book, and
– this Sam Newman (2019). Monolith to Microservices – Evolutionary Patterns to Transform Your Monolith. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Cloves Carneiro and Tim Schmelmer (2016). Microservices From Day One. Apress book to learn how to design microservices.

After that please read
– this Martin Kleppmann (2016). Making Sense of Stream Processing. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Nathan Marz and James Warren (2015). Big Data: Principles and Best Practices of Scalable Realtime Data Systems. Manning Publications book, and
– this Ian Gorton (2022). Foundations of Scalable Systems – Designing Distributed Architectures. O’Reilly Media book  to learn how to leverage event sourcing and stream processing to design scalable big data software systems.

Terminology Review:

  • Enterprise Applications
  • Enterprise Systems
  • Transaction Processing
  • Domain-Driven Design
  • Factory
  • Repository
  • Microservices
  • Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CRQS)
  • Event Sourcing
  • Stream Processing
  • Lambda Architecture
  • Kappa Architecture
  • Event-Driven Architecture
  • Serverless

After finishing learning this topic please click Topic 17 – Calculus to continue.

 

Computer Science Curriculum, Mathematics, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 17 – Calculus

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Why do I need to learn about calculus?

Calculus is a fundamental tool for understanding modern theories and techniques to create software such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, data mining, security, digital imagine processing and natural language processing.

What can I do after finishing learning about calculus?

You will then be prepared to be able to learn modern theories and techniques to create security, data mining, image processing or natural language processing software.

What should I do now?

Please watch this MIT 18.01 – Single Variable Calculus, Fall 2007 course (Lecture Notes).  When you watch this course please refer to this George F. Simmons (1996). Calculus With Analytic Geometry. McGraw-Hill book when you have difficulties with understanding some lectures.

Alternatively, you can read
– this George F. Simmons (1996). Calculus With Analytic Geometry. McGraw-Hill book or
– this C. Henry Edwards David E. Penney (2008). Calculus – Early Transcendentals. Pearson book or
– this George B. Thomas et al. (2018). Thomas’ Calculus: Early Transcendentals. Pearson Education book or
– this James Stewart et al. (2020). Calculus: Early Transcendentals. Cengage Learning book.

After that please watch this MIT 18.02 – Multivariable Calculus, Fall 2007 course (Lecture Notes). You will need some Linear Algebra knowledge (specifically Inverse Matrix and Determinant) to understand Multivariable Calculus.

After that please watch this Highlights of Calculus course to review many core concepts of Calculus.

After that please watch this MIT 18.03 – Differential Equations, Spring 2006 course (Readings). When you watch this course please refer to this C. Henry Edwards and David E. Penney (2013). Elementary Differential Equations with Boundary Value Problems. Pearson Education book when you have difficulties with understanding some lectures.

What is the difference between calculus and analysis?

Calculus means a method of calculation. Calculus is about differentiation and integration.

Real analysis includes calculus, and other topics that may not be of interest to engineers but of interest to pure mathematicians such as measure theory, lebesgue integral, topology, functional analysis, complex analysis, PDE, ODE, proofs of theorems.

What does early transcendentals mean?

Transcendentals in this context refers to functions like the exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions.

The early transcendentals approach means that the book introduces polynomial, rational functions, exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions at the beginning, then use them as examples when developing differential calculus. This approach is good for students who do not need to take much rigorous math.

The classical approach is the late transcendentals. It means that the book develops differential calculus using only polynomials and rational functions as examples, then introduces the other functions afterwards. This approach is good for students who need to understand more rigorous definitions of the transcendental functions.

Single Variable Calculus Terminology Review:

  • Slope.
  • Derivative.
  • Rate of Change.
  • Limit.
  • Continuity.
  • Chain Rule.
  • Implicit Differentiation.
  • Linear Approximations.
  • Quadratic Approximations.
  • Critical Point.
  • Newton’s Method.
  • Mean Value Theorem.
  • Differentials.
  • Antiderivatives.
  • Differential Equations.
  • Separation of Variables.
  • First Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.
  • Indeterminate Forms.
  • L’Hospital’s Rule.
  • Improper Integrals.
  • Infinite Series.
  • Taylor’s Series.
  • Taylor’s Formula.

Multivariable Calculus Terminology Review:

  • Vectors.
  • Dot Product.
  • Cross Product.
  • Inverse Matrix.
  • Determinant.
  • Equations of Planes: ax + by + cz = d
  • Parametric Equations = as trajectory of a moving point.
  • Velocity Vector.
  • Acceleration Vector.
  • Level Curve.
  • Tangent Plane.
  • Saddle Point.
  • Functions of Several Variables.
  • Partial Derivatives.
  • Second Derivatives.
  • Second Derivative Test.
  • Differentials.
  • Gradients.
  • Directional Derivatives.
  • Lagrange Multipliers.
  • Power Series.
  • Geometric Series.
  • Euler’s Formula.

Differential Equation Terminology Review:

  • Isocline (equal slope): a line which joins neighboring points with the same gradient.
  • Direction Fields.
  • Integral Curve: The graph of a particular solution of a differential equation.
  • IVP: Initial Value Problem.
  • Euler’s Numerical Method.
  • Linear First Order ODE Standard Form: y′ + p(x)y = q(x)
  • Integrating Factor or Euler Multiplier: The method is based on (ux)’ = ux’ + u’x.
  • Substitution: to change variables to end up with a simpler equation to solve.
  • Bernoulli equations: y′ + p(x)y = q(x)yⁿ.
  • Homogeneous equations: y′ = F (y/x)
  • Autonomous equations: dx/dt = f(x). If we think of as time, the naming comes from the fact that the equation is independent of time.

After finishing learning about calculus please click Topic 18 – Linear Algebra to continue.

Database Management Systems, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 15 – Introduction to Database Design

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Why do I need to learn about database design?

Database is the heart of any software system, 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 structure of big databases. That’s why you need to learn about database design.

What can I do after finishing learning about database design?

You will know how to design a relational database and write SQL code PROPERLY (i.e. for specific purposes). You will know how to build a data warehouse. You will know WHEN you should use a relational database management system or WHEN you should use a NoSQL database management system and HOW they actually work.

That sounds useful! What should I do now?

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.

Then 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 Abraham Silberschatz et al. (2019). Database System Concepts. McGraw-Hill Education book to learn about concepts that will help you understand how distributed databases work later.

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 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.

And finally 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.

Terminology Review:

  • SQL
  • Relational Model
  • Relational Theory
  • Normal Forms
  • Database Design
  • Enterprise Applications
  • Enterprise Systems
  • Data Warehouse
  • Dimensional Modeling
  • Data-Intensive Applications
  • NoSQL
  • 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

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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 Ken Schwaber (2004). Agile Project Management with Scrum. Microsoft Press book, and
– this Jonathan Rasmusson (2010). The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software. Pragmatic Bookshelf book, and
– this Kenneth S. Rubin (2012). Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Mike Cohn (2010). Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum. Addison Wesley book, and
– this Dean Leffingwell (2011). Agile Software Requirements. Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Mike Cohn (2005). Agile Estimating And Planning. Pearson Education book, and
– this Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres (2004). Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change. 2nd Edition. Pearson Education book, and
– this James Shore and Shane Warden (2008). The Art of Agile Development. O’Reilly book, and
– this Esther Derby and Diana Larsen (2006). Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. Pragmatic Bookshelf book
to learn how to develop software using Scrum and agile mindset.

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 – Introduction to Database Design to continue.

Software Design, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 13 – Introduction to Software Design

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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 communicated, built and maintained, 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.

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.
  • 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

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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

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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.

After that please read
– this Elton Stoneman (2020). Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches. Manning Publications book, and
– this Yevgeniy Brikman (2022). Terraform – Up and Running. O’Reilly Media book.

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.

Terminology Review:

  • Version Control.
  • Coding Standards.
  • Unit Tests.
  • Continuous Integration.
  • Refactoring.
  • Legacy Code.
  • Code Reading.
  • Containers.
  • Data Providers.
  • Object/Relational Mapping (ORM).
  • Reporting Services.
  • Authentication.
  • Authorization.
  • Performance.

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

 

Software Engineering Curriculum, Software Requirements

Topic 10 – Software Requirements

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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.

 

 

Software Engineering Curriculum, Web Application Development

Topic 8 – Introduction to Web Application Development

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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

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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 create enterprise systems, such as airlines and railways, banking, education, telecommunications, digital libraries and digital publishing, finance, sales, health care information systems.

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 Jeff Carpenter and Eben Hewitt (2020). 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:

  • Database Management Systems
  • Relational Databases
  • (Oracle) Tablespaces, Datafiles, and Objects
  • (Oracle) Databases, Instances, Schemas
  • Entity-Relationship Model
  • SQL, TSQL
  • Stored Procedures
  • Functions
  • Relational Model
  • Joins
  • Subqueries
  • Views
  • Common Table Expressions
  • Indexes
  • Recovery
  • Replication
  • NoSQL
  • Key-Value Databases
  • Document Databases
  • Column-Family Databases

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