EECS3311 - Software design - Winter 2017

Laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. (“devices”) usage in class is a two-edged sword. They can provide opportunities for learning but are also hugely distracting. For now, we encourage you to be disciplined in your usage of these devices. Put them away when they aren't needed. Stay focused on the class and you'll find that you learn more and better.

• Lectures: EECS3311 | Mon./Wed. 4-5.30pm | SLH-C
• Scheduled Labs: Monday 5.30pm to 7pm in LAS1006. Start with Lab0 and Lab1 on the first day of classes.
• Quizzes every week during labs.
• Textbooks: the following texts are highly recommended and are available on reserve in the Library:
  • Bertrand Meyer, Touch of Class: Learning how to Program Well, with Objects and Contracts, Springer Verlag, revised printing, 2013, book page here (this is a complete course with slides, videos and exercises). The text Touch of Class is available with online access via Steacie Library. The book describes computational thinking with the Eiffel language. Use this text to learn about design by contract, polymorphism, static typing, dynamic binding, genericity, multiple inheritance, and lambda expressions (agents). These are all topics needed for this course.
  • [OOSC2] Bertrand Meyer. Object-Oriented Software Construction. Second edition. Prentice Hall, 1997. This is a classic text on software design principles.
  • Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, 1994, by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides
  • BON (Business Object Notation). The BON method for analysis and design of object-oriented software is a means of extending the higher-level concepts of the Eiffel programming language into the realm of analysis and design aided by a graphical notation akin to but different from UML. BON is described in depth in the book Seamless Object-Oriented Software Architecture, Prentice Hall 1994, by Kim Waldén and Jean-Marc Nerson. The book is out of print but is available as a pdf. There is a template in Visio to do nice BON diagrams.

* Important: Subscribe to the forum for the latest announcements. Please ask all questions relating to the course material on the forum (not via email). For all other questions, see the course instructor during office hours.

• See bottom ↓ of this page for login with your Prism password. Slides are available from the SVN repository (see link in the sidebar, once you have logged on).

• Office hours: A TA will be available during the Lab hour (5.30pm to 7pm) on Mondays in LAS1006.

• Get started using the Eiffelstudio IDE on the first day of class (here). Compile and execute a hello world program. Then use the ESpec library to write and execute your first test. You might want to run through this introductory tutorial.

• Examples and useful slides from other instructors for this course.

The work load in this course, as in most computer science and engineering courses, is high. The course has a large unscheduled laboratory component to it which involves writing and testing Eiffel programs. You should be prepared to devote 12 hours a week on average to the course; this includes class time. With proper planning and discipline, you can spread most of the work load fairly evenly throughout the course.

It is up to you to read and study relevant material without explicit instructions. You are expected to find the required readings in the references and any other sources you can find. Part of the university experience is to acquire a measure of self reliance. The instructor for the course can only guide you as to what is useful to learn; the effort must come from you. The course classes will not cover all the topics in detail. Instead, the classes will cover the most important points and give you pointers as to how the rest of the material can be studied.

A study of design methods and their use in the correct implementation, maintenance and evolution of software systems. Topics include design, implementation, testing, documentation needs and standards, support tools. Students design and implement components of a software system. Weekly 1.5 hour laboratory (starting 2017). Prerequisites: General prerequisites; including SC/MATH 1090 3.00; LE/EECS 2031 3.00.

Software designers are experts at developing software products that are correct, robust, efficient and maintainable. Correctness is the ability of software products to perform according to specification. Robustness is the ability of a software system to react appropriately to abnormal conditions. Software is maintainable if it is well-designed according to the principles of abstraction, modularity, and information hiding. At the end of the course, students will be able to:

1. Specification: Describe software specifications via Design by Contract, including the use of preconditions, postconditions, class invariants, loop variants and invariants

2. Construction: Implement specifications with designs that are correct, efficient and maintainable.

3. Testing: Develop systematic approaches to organizing, writing, testing and debugging software.

4. Analysis: Develop insight into the process of moving from an ambiguous problem statement to a well-designed solution.

5. Architecture: Design software using appropriate abstractions, modularity, information hiding, and design patterns.

6. Tools: Develop facility in the use of an IDE for editing, organizing, writing, debugging, testing and documenting code including the use of BON/UML diagrams for documenting designs. Also the ability to deploy the software in an executable form.

7. Documentation: Develop the ability to write precise and concise software documentation that also describes the design decisions and why they were made.

1. Unit Tests, regression testing, using testing tools and debugging

2. Specifying modules with classical contracts: preconditions, postconditions and class invariants. Command-Query Separation Principle. Client-Supplier relarionships and modularity.

3. Iterator Pattern Design Pattern and quantification, Singleton Design Pattern

4. Classes as partially implemented abstract datatypes specified with contracts.

5. Static (compile time) type checking and dynamic binding semantics in object oriented design.

6. Inheritance, polymorphism and the Liskov substitution principle. Inheritance sub-contracting

7. Multi-panel Design Pattern (command and state pattern).

8. ETF (Eiffel Testing Framework) with singleton, command, publish-subscribe and MVC design patterns

9. Tuples and functional programming in design (lambda calculus and agents)

10. Strategy design pattern. Observer Design Pattern, comparison of design decisions with publish-subscribe and event-based programming

11. Decorator and Open-Closed Design Principle. Static Class Diagram and Dynamic Sequence Diagram.

12. Composite and Visitor Design Patterns. UML inheritance (generalization) and client-supplier (associations, aggregation and composition).

13. Using executable mathemtical models (sets, functions, and relations) to develop a model of a complex system, and an abstraction function for checking that an implementation satisfies the high-level model.

14. Design by Contract, choosing the right abstractions and Information Hiding.