UNIVERSITY OF MAURITIUS

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

PAPER NO EXAMINATION DATE

First Semester 2006/2007

MScCS/06F/4 MSc Computer Science Saturday

with specialisation in either 9 December 2006
Distributed Systems and Multimedia
or Software Engineering
Level 1

SERIES PAPER TIME

Nov/Dec 2006 Software Requirements 9:30 – 12:30 Hours

Engineering and Research Methods
(CSE 6101)

This paper contains FIVE (5) Questions. Candidates are required to answer
ALL Questions.

Each question carries 20 marks.

Start each question on a fresh sheet.

Read the case study and answer the questions that follow

Case Study: Flood warning system - outline description

A flood warning system is to be procured by a river authority which will give advance
warning of possible flood dangers to sites which are threatened by floods. The goal of the
system is to reduce the disruption caused by flooding. This flood warning system will
cover all of the major rivers in the river authority’s area. The system is intended to
replace an existing warning system that relies on manual reading of sensors.

The system will include a set of automated sensors to monitor the rate of change of river
levels and send this information to a central river database; links to meteorological
systems giving weather forecasts; links to the communication systems of emergency
services (police, coastguard, etc.); video monitors installed at selected locations; and a
control room equipped with multi-media operator consoles and video monitors.

Controllers can access database information, display it graphically and integrate the
input from the video monitors into their display. The system database includes
information about the sensors, the locations of sites at risk and the threat conditions for
these sites (e.g. high tide, south-westerly winds), tide tables for coastal sites, the
inventory and location of flood control equipment, contact details for emergency services,
local radio stations, etc. Information about flood control equipment is already maintained
by the river authority in an existing relational database. Historical information about
river levels is also maintained in a set of files, one file per river. Radio equipment that is
compatible with the equipment used by the police is available. The current flood
information control room has recently been re-equipped with SUN workstations as
operator consoles. The river authority has a number of IT staff trained in C, C++ and in
the use of Oracle databases.

A number of warnings levels of increasing seriousness are defined:

(i) LEVEL I
(ii) LEVEL II
(iii) LEVEL III
(iv) LEVEL IV

Different river water-levels will be associated with each one of the warning levels for
different flood sites. The meteorological service has a web service across which it makes
the latest weather forecasting data available. Regional weather forecasting data at the
sites at risk is also available. Weather forecasting data comprises of weather conditions,
expected rainfall, tide time tables and wind conditions.

(continued next page)

Page 1 of 8
Flood Warning System “(FWS)” High Level Requirements Specifications.
Some of the requirements elicited are shown in the table below:
Identifier Requirement
1. Input Data
ID01 The system shall read water-level information automatically from a set of
automated sensors located across all the major rivers in the river authority
area every 30 minutes.

ID02 Water-level information from sensors information shall then be transmitted

to the central database at the control room via ISDN leased lines.

ID03 The system shall read video data from video cameras installed at selected
locations. The video images of the rivers’ water-levels shall then be sent to
video monitors installed in selected locations and can be integrated with the
user interface of the control room console operators

2. Database
DB01 The database will be located in a control room equipped with SUN
workstations (multimedia operator consoles) and video monitors

DB02 The system database shall maintain an inventory and the location of flood
control equipment.

DB03 The system database shall store links to the communication systems of
emergency services (police, coastguard, ambulance) and contact details of
local radio stations for flood warnings.

DB04 The system shall also maintain in its database the locations of the sites at
risk, and from the tide information (available from tide tables) and wind
conditions (available from meteorological services) determine the threat
conditions for the sites at risk.

DB05 The system database shall store the critical water levels associated with
warning LEVEL I to LEVEL IV for every flood site.

3. User Interface
… … [requirements not included]

… …

(continued next page)

Page 2 of 8
4. Flood Warning
FW01 In the event of rising water-levels, the system shall alert the on-call staff, the
back-up staff and River Authority management at any time.

FW02 The system shall allow operators to specify critical water levels for LEVEL I
to IV for every flood sites (where there are sensors).

FW03 If the system detects water-levels rising above critical water-levels, it will
display the corresponding warning across all multimedia consoles and
sound an alarm in the control room during working hours. Only for LEVEL
III and LEVEL IV warnings, will alert messages be displayed on the screens
of the River Authority management.

FW04 After working hours, if the system detects water-levels rising above critical
water-levels, the system shall synthesize audio (speech) warnings based
from the text associated with the warnings, water-level information and the
location of the flood site. If LEVELIII and IV warnings are generated, contact
information for emergency services and local radio stations shall be included
in the voice calls made on the mobile phone numbers of on-call staff, the
back-up staff and River Authority management.

5. Communications
… [requirements not included]

6. Security
… [requirements not included]

7. System Administration
… [requirements not included]

(continued next page)

Page 3 of 8
Question 1

(a) Identify 4 possible stakeholders that might be a source of system requirements for
the Flood Warning System (FWS) system.
[4 marks]

(b) Write down one requirement for each of the following dimensions: Interface,
Communications, Security and System Administration.
[8 marks]

(c) State 3 objectives of the requirements document? [3 marks]

(d) (i) Describe briefly what the major issues are in solely relying on interviews
during requirements elicitation.
[2 marks]

(ii) Explain why a combination of ethnography and prototyping is useful for

requirements elicitation?
[3 marks]

Page 4 of 8
Question 2

(a) (i) Suggest one reason why requirements may be ambiguous. Give an example
of a possible ambiguity which may arise in the Flood Warning System.
[2 marks]

(ii) What is the critical distinction between throw-away and evolutionary

prototyping?
[2 marks]

(b) Discuss briefly the following statement.

“Agile programming is adaptive rather than predictive”.

[3 marks]

(c) After discovering requirements from various stakeholders, these requirements

must be analysed and a number of checks made on them. What types of checks
should be performed on requirements? Suggest a checklist that could be used to
run checks on the requirements.
[3 marks]

(d) Perform these checks on the following requirements: ID01, ID02, ID03, DB01,
DB02, DB03, DB04, DB05, FW01, FW02, FW03, FW04 (as listed in the
requirements specification on page 2 of 8 and page 3 of 8). It is recommended that
you record the outcome of the check as pass: 9or fail: 8 in a tabular form. Also,
suggest what modifications should be made to the requirements if any one of
them fails a particular check.
[10 marks]

Page 5 of 8
Question 3

(a) Build an interaction matrix using the following subset of the requirements ID01,
ID02, DB01, DB02, FW01, FW02, FW03, and FW04.
[8 marks]

(b) (i) What are the merits of developing scenarios for eliciting requirements?
[2 marks]

(ii) Suggest TWO plausible use-case scenarios for the Flood Warning System.
[6 marks]

(c) Why is it sometimes necessary for requirements documents to include information

about the design of the system?
[2 marks]

(d) Do you agree with the following statement? “Scenario Analysis has been proven
effective in building dependable systems in the presence of the “say-do” problem.
Justify your answer.
[2 marks]

Page 6 of 8
Question 4

(a) (i) After requirements elicitation, analysis and negotiation, the requirements
are validated. What validation problems might arise if the system prototype
used in the validation process exhibited very poor performance?
[2 marks]

(ii) In checks of object models of the system, give examples of two problems
which can be discovered automatically by CASE tools and two problems
which can only be discovered by manual inspection.
[4 marks]

(b) Suggest one test which might be developed to validate the Security requirements
and another one test for the System Administration requirements you answered in
Question 1 (b). Do these tests give any insights into possible requirements
problems?
[4 marks]

(c) In requirements management,

(i) Explain why traceability matrices become difficult to manage when there
are a large number of requirements for a system. Suggest a methodology to
help address this problem.
[2 marks]

(ii) Discuss briefly what the main causes of a high degree of “requirements
volatility” are.
[4 marks]

(d) Classify the following requirements from Flood Warning System as stable or
volatile requirements: ID01, ID02, DB01, DB02, FW01, FW02, FW03, and FW04.
Justify your answer.
[4 marks]

Page 7 of 8
Question 5

(a) Define the term viewpoint as used in the CORE method for requirement
specification and explain the importance of viewpoints when defining
requirements using CORE.
[3 marks]

(b) The requirements for the Flood Warning System are to be derived. Using the
CORE method, identify the functional and non-functional viewpoints given in the
case. Divide the functional viewpoints into bounding viewpoints and defining
viewpoints, and draw a viewpoint hierarchy. Justify your choice of viewpoints and
state any assumptions required to complete the analysis.
[7 marks]

(c) Sketch tabular entry diagrams for the principal defining viewpoint and bounding
viewpoints identified in part (b). Again state any assumptions required to complete
these diagrams. Comment on the relationship between the diagrams.
[7 marks]

(d) Discuss the following statement “non-functional requirements are poorly

integrated into the CORE method”.
[3 marks]

END OF QUESTION PAPER

/nr

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