UNIVERSITY OF MAURITIUS

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

FIRST SEMESTER EXAMINATIONS

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

PROGRAMME BSc (Hons) Computer Applications (Full-Time & Part-Time)

BSc (Hons) Computer Science
BSc (Hons) Information Systems – (Full-Time)

MODULE NAME Software Engineering

DATE Tuesday MODULE CODE CSE 2142(3)

06 December 2011

TIME 13:30 – 15:30 Hrs DURATION 2 hours

NO. OF 5 NO. OF QUESTIONS 4

QUESTIONS SET TO BE ATTEMPTED

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

This paper consists of Five (5) questions.

Answer any Four (4) questions.

Each question carries 25 marks.

 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

Answer any Four (4) questions.

Question 1

Read carefully the case study which is about meeting planner and hotel site selection
system and answer the questions that follow.

WorldVenueQuest(WVQ) is a global meeting planner and hotel site selection company

which provides world class services of Group Travel and Meeting Management. All
types of Corporations and Government agencies can make the most of its services
whenever they have the need to fix a hotel for a meeting, conference or group booking. It
considers all the logistic needs of the clients such as number of hotel rooms, size of
meeting space, required meals, desired locations, and preferred dates. It searches the
suitable hotels which go with the needs of the clients. Even it provides full meeting
management services including event budgeting, online attendee registration, off-site
event planning, guest speakers, event staffing and more. WVQ wanted to develop its
own Registration System that can popularize its services with more ease. The complete
system was asked to be created to provide registration service in the most cost-effective
way. There was a strong need to develop a portal which facilitate users to sign up for
additional cost activities like golf tournaments or special dinners .The portal is required
to have the feature of importing the contact information of all the clients and even the
ability to export data into merge documents like address labels, name badges and letters.
In addition to this, the system should be secure and reliable. Concisely, WVQ needed a
faster, efficient and reliable Online Registration System that can enhance their overall
business and augment the impression in the market. In other words, instead of the whole
final solution, WVQ accepts to have the solutions in increments, each within 4 weeks.
Each part will consist of new features and errors will be corrected. After obtaining the
user feedback from WVQ, new demonstration will be performed.

(a) “Requirements should state what a system should do, without stating how it
should do it”. Describe why this distinction is important?
[3 marks]

(b) State and explain four reasons why stakeholders tend to change Requirements in
software development life cycle.
[4 marks]

…/Cont’d next page

Page 1 of 6
 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

Question 1 [Cont’d]

(c) Write down three functional and three non-functional requirements of

WorldVenueQuest(WVQ) global meeting planner and hotel site selection
company.
[3+3 marks]

(d) Requirement specification may yield some problems stemming from the use of
natural language. Suggest two problems that may be encountered and provide
one alternative that is available for requirements specification.
[2+1 marks]

(e) Propose the most suitable software process model that WorldVenueQuest(WVQ)
can use to solve the problems encountered. Justify your answer.
[2+4 marks]

(f) Assess how the software requirement specification (SRS) document is useful to
WorldVenueQuest(WVQ).
[3 marks]

Question 2

(a) Describe two reasons why software project fails and two reasons why software
project management is difficult. [4 marks]

(b) Explain why the process of project planning is iterative and why a plan must be
continually reviewed during a software project. [2+2 marks]

(c) A mature software company with experienced staff is developing an automated

warehouse. The customer has asked for an initial schedule and cost estimation.

Task Duration(months) Dependencies

A 2
B 4 A
C 5 A
D 4 B
E 3 B
F 5 C,D
G 4 C,D,E
H 3 C,D
I 4 F,G,H
(i) Illustrate the dependencies for the different tasks in the above table with an
activity network diagram.
[4 marks]

…/Cont’d next page

Page 2 of 6
 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

Question 2 [Cont’d]

(ii) Highlight the critical path in (c)(i) above. [2 marks]

(iii) Give one advantage and one disadvantage of using the Function point
analysis to estimate size of software. [2 marks]

(iv) Given that the unadjusted function points is 243 and the adjustment factor
is 23 and the software for the automated warehouse is to be developed in
java, calculate the size(SLOC) of the program assuming that 1 Function
point is equivalent to 50 lines of code.
[3 marks]

(v) Using the SLOC obtained in part (iv) and an algorithmic model with
Effort =3.0(SKLOC) 1.1, calculate the amount of people required to work on
the project. (Hint: the critical path gives the total duration of the project).
[2 marks]

(vi) Using the SLOC obtained in part (iv) and the basic COCOMO method,
Calculate the total effort in person months and the total development time.
(Hint: use SLOC to get project mode).

Organic Semi-detached Embedded

a 2.4 3 3.6
b 1.05 1.12 1.2
c 2.5 2.5 2.5
d 0.38 0.35 0.32

[4 marks]
Question 3

(a) With the help of a diagram, explain the different phases in the design process.

[6 marks]
(b) (i) Identify the type of cohesion in Figure 1 and give a brief explanation of this
type of cohesion.
[3 marks]

DateMidnight birthdate = new DateMidnight(1970, 1, 20);

DateTime now = new DateTime();
Years age = Years.yearsBetween(birthdate, now);
Calculate_retirementAge(age);

Figure 1
…/Cont’d next page

Page 3 of 6
 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

Question 3 [Cont’d]

(ii) Identify the type of coupling in Figure 2 and give a brief explanation of this
type of coupling.
[3 marks]

Function EmployeeGrade(EmpRec er)

if empStatus = 1
return(“CEO”);

elif empStatus = 2
return(“Manager”);

elif empStatus = 3
return(“Supervisor”);

End Function

Figure 2

(c) ElectricSys is an application that allows customers to query their electric utility
bills and to perform their payments online. The application allows users to input
their account information, which is used to query the billing information. The
billing details are sent back to the customer in the form of an electronic invoice.
The customer can then decide to pay the bill online or else print a copy of the
invoice for payment at the closest electric utility bill counter. The application
should be scalable to cater for the increasing number of users and accommodate
future services.

(i) Suggest the most suitable architectural design model that can be used for
the ElectricSys application. Justify your answer.
[1+2 marks]

(ii) State one advantage of this type of architectural design.

[1 mark]

(d) The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a methodology used to develop and
refine an organization's software development process. Briefly explain the
different phases in the CMM.
[5 marks]

(e) (i) What is the meaning of Defect Removal Effciency (DRE)?

(ii) A new software has been delivered to a client. If the number of errors
found before delivery = 8 and the number of defects noted after the
delivery = 0, calculate the DRE. Comment on your answer.
[2+2 marks]

Page 4 of 6
 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

Question 4

(a) Differentiate between white box testing and black box testing.
[2 marks]

(b) Consider the following pseudocode:

Sum = 0
Count = 0
i, a, b = input("Enter i,a,b:")
while (i > 0):
num = input("Enter num:")
if (num >= a and num <= b):
Sum = Sum + num
Count = Count + 1
else:
print "Number is out of range entered"
i=i-1
Average = Sum/Count
print Average

(i) Draw the flow graph for the above code. [7 marks]

(ii) Calculate the cyclomatic complexity of the flow graph. [1 mark]

(iii) With reference to your flow graph, write down all the different paths that
have to be tested. [4 marks]

(c) You have just been hired as Software Tester at SoftComp Ltd. Your first
assignment concerns the client module of “Pizza home delivery”, that has just
been implemented. The module accepts the name, age and phone number of the
client. The specifications state that (1) name is to be in alphabetic characters from 3
to 30 in length, (2) age may be a value between 18 and 100, and (3) phone numbers
are 7 numeric characters.

(i) Derive the equivalence classes for the above specification. [6 marks]

(ii) Assuming that the inputs are each delimited by a comma, write five (5) test
cases, for which the expected outcome is FALSE/INVALID. You are
required to use the table header below to populate your test cases.

Test No. Test Data Expected Outcome Classes covered

[5 marks]

Page 5 of 6
 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CSE 2142(3)

Question 5

(a) Requirement engineering builds a bridge from the system requirements into
software design and construction. During validation phase, the work products
produced as a result of requirements engineering are assessed.

(i) State three objectives of the assessment exercise. [3 marks]

(ii) State and briefly describe a requirement validation mechanism. [2 marks]

(b) During elaboration phase of requirement engineering the software engineer takes
the information obtained during inception and elicitation and begins to expand
and refine it. Elaboration focuses on developing a refined technical model of
software functions, features, and constraints. Explain using an example, how the
technical model is developed.
[5 marks]

(c) You are the project manager of the Pixel software company. The software
company is currently facing financial problems and is being restructured. You
have been asked to lead a team that's developing an online Sales and Inventory
Management System (SIMS). The company has traditionally developed stand-
alone desktop systems and it is the first time that an online system is developed at
Pixel.

This project is aimed at developing an online Sales and Inventory Management

System (SIMS) for a departmental store. This system can be used to store the
details of the inventory, update the inventory based on the sale details, produce
receipts for sales, generate sales and inventory reports periodically etc. This is one
integrated system that contains both the user component (used by salespersons,
sales managers, inventory managers, etc) and the admin component (used by the
administrators for performing admin level functions such as adding new items to
the inventory, changing the price of an item, etc). There may be changes in the
requirements or new requirements for the system. This system runs on multiple
terminals, offers a GUI interface to its users and connects to a common
database(s).

(i) Identify and state the five most important risks for the above project. State
the category of each risk identified.
[5 marks]
(ii) Describe one strategy to manage each of the risks identified above.
[5 marks]
(iii) Identify an appropriate indicator for each of the risks to assess whether or
not that risk is becoming more or less probable or whether the effect of the
risk have changed.
[5 marks]

END OF QUESTION PAPER

/ph

Page 6 of 6