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UoL CS Notes

Seminar 2

COMP107 Seminars

System design as Modelling

graph TD
A[The Problem to be Solved] --> |Suitable for computation| B[The Program]
B --> D[The Output]
D --> |Result suitable for interpretation| C[The request required]
A --> |What we want| C

Modelling Process

graph LR
A[Real World Problem] --> B[Information Model]
B --> C[Conceptual Model]
C --> D[Logical Model]
D --> E[Physical Model]

An example of this process:

  • Problem in the real world.
  • A plain English description of the input, output and main components.
  • Entity Relationship model of the data in a database.
  • The definition of the table of a relational database.
    • The technical details of the model such as the database format and table definitions.
  • MySQL or Oracle database.

The purpose of the modelling process is so you can give your design to another person in a team and they know how to implement it.

Assignment 1

Produce a wiki-style report (between 2000 and 2500 words) introducing an innovative system/application you would like to implement.

This system will not be implemented as you can write the proposal with little concern of whether it it realisable.

Things to Include

  • The domain of the system.
    • In which context is it useful?
  • What makes the solution important?
    • Requires references as to why it is an important problem to solve.
  • What makes it new?
    • Research 3 - 5 direct competitors in the market and describe why yours is better.
  • The purpose of the new system.
  • What different categories of users will the system have?
    • Envisaging how they will utilise the system.
  • Main benefits and shortcomings of the system and the main obstacles and shortcomings of the system.
    • Also the main invectives for uptake of the system.
  • Include a high level description of that data and what the users will use the data for.
    • Include a description of each of the user categories you have identified.

Any outside meeting should be recorded on canvas in the form of minutes.