CityU of Seattle

Systems Operations And Support: – Define systems operations and support. – Describe relative roles of a repository, program library, and database in systems operations and support. – Differentiate between maintenance, recovery, technical support, and enhancement as system support activities. – Describe tasks required to maintain programs in response to bugs. – Describe role of benchmarking in system maintenance. – Describe the systems analyst’s role in system recovery. – Describe forms of technical support provided by a systems analyst for the user community. – Describe tasks that should/may be performed in system enhancement, and relationship between enhancement and original systems development process. – Describe the role of reengineering in systems enhancement. Describe three types of re-engineering

User Interface Design: – Distinguish between different types of computer users and design considerations for each. – Identify several important human engineering factors and guidelines and incorporate them into a design of a user interface. – Integrate output and input design into an overall user interface that establishes the dialogue between users and computer. – Understand role of operating systems, web browsers, and other technologies for user interface design. – Apply appropriate user interface strategies to an information system. Use a state transition diagram to plan and coordinate a user interface. – Describe how prototyping can be used to design a user interface.
Object-Oriented Design & Modeling Using The UML – Understand entity, interface, control, persistence, and system classes. – Understand the concepts of dependency and navigability. – Define visibility and explain its three levels. – Understand the concept object responsibility and how it is related to message sending between object types. – Describe the activities involved in object-oriented design. – Differentiate between a design use-case narrative and an analysis use-case narrative. – Describe CRC card modeling. – Model class interactions with sequence diagrams. – Construct a class diagram that reflects design specifics. – Model object states with state machine diagrams. – Understand the role of coupling and cohesion in object reuse. – Describe the use of design patterns and two common design patterns. – Differentiate between design patterns, object frameworks, and components. – Understand the use of communication diagrams, component diagrams, and deployment diagrams.

Database Design: – Compare and contrast conventional files and modern, relational databases. – Define and give examples of fields, records, files, and databases. – Describe modern data architecture of files, operational databases, data warehouses, personal databases, and work group databases. – Compare roles of systems analyst, database administrator, and data administrator. – Describe architecture of database management system – Describe how a relational database implements entities, attributes, and relationships from a logical data model. – Transform a logical data model into a physical, relational database schema. – Generate SQL to create the database structure in a schema.
Output Design and Prototyping: – Distinguish between internal, external, and turnaround outputs. – Differentiate between detailed, summary, and exception reports. – Identify several output implementation methods. – Differentiate among tabular, zoned, and graphic formats for presenting information. – Distinguish among area, bar, column, pie, line, radar, donut, and scatter charts and their uses. – Describe several general principles that are important to output design. – Design and prototype computer outputs.
Input Design and Prototyping: – Define the appropriate format and media for a computer input. – Explain the difference between data capture, data entry, and data input. – Identify and describe several automatic data collection technologies. – Apply human factors to the design of computer inputs. – Design internal controls for computer inputs. – Select proper screen-based controls for input attributes that are to appear on a GUI input screen. – Design a web-based input interface.

System Design: – Describe the design phase in terms of your information building blocks. – Identify and differentiate between several systems design strategies. – Describe the design phase tasks in terms of a computer-based solution for an in-house development project. – Describe the design phase in terms of a computer-based solution involving procurement of a commercial systems software solution.
Application Architecture & Modeling: – Define an information system’s architecture in terms of the KNOWLEDGE, PROCESSES, and COMMUNICATION building blocks. – Differentiate between logical and physical data flow diagrams, and explain how physical data flow diagrams are used to model an information system’s architecture. – Describe centralized and distributed computing alternatives, including client/server and Internet-based computing options. – Describe database and data distribution alternatives for system design. – Describe user and system interface alternatives for system design. – Describe various software development environments for information system design. – Describe strategies for developing or determining architecture of an information system. – Draw physical data flow diagrams for an information system’s architecture and processes.

Feasibility Analysis & The System Proposal: – Identify feasibility checkpoints in the systems life cycle. – Identify alternative system solutions. – Define and describe six types of feasibility and their respective criteria. – Perform various cost-benefit analyses using time-adjusted costs and benefits. – Write suitable system proposal reports for different audiences. – Plan for a formal presentation to system owners and users.