The material for day 4 focussed on Business Process Modelling. This sits orthogonally to Patterns for e-Business, defining business functions over their architecture.
There are two notations for Business Processes put forward – BPMN and UML Use Case/Activity Diagrams. My part of the coursework assignment is to apply BPM to the johnlewis.com some processes on the website, for which I’ve chosen Activity Diagrams and Visual Paradigm for UML. I did take a look at the implementations of BPMN, but I found a familiar pattern – they either didn’t work or cost $$$. Fortunately, VP is still serving me well.
The lab session was spent working with my team on the coursework and setting up tasks for the rest of week. As we’re producing a large report and taking different sections, we’ve set up a Google Docs site to drop working drafts onto to help us collaborate. It’s the first time I’ve used Google Docs like this and so far I like it, it’s responsive, intuitive and it’s easy to share a folder with a group of people, so for this kind of work it’s looking good.
In other news, the marks for the Machine Learning module are in and I’m very happy to have passed! That’s two modules, or one-quarter of my MSc done.
Paul Brabban Computer Science, MSc
Today was hand-in day for the first part of this module’s coursework – to design a shop, based on four requirements, using Object-Oriented design principles. Specifically, we had to use the State, Strategy and Item Description patterns, although I also worked in a couple of other patterns I like – Decorator (solves problems of composing functionality using recursion) and Iterator (hides implementation details of collections behind a simple object you can only iterate over).
I quite enjoyed having a simple pet problem like this, with a real reason to work through some aspects of it. If you’re interested in having a go yourself, the assignment reminded me of the first pragprog Code Kata – Supermarket Pricing.
As a result of the coursework, I’ve found a UML tool I can live with – Visual Paradigm. I’ll probably do a bit of a review and compare with the other tools I tried soon, but suffice to say it was by some margin the most pleasant and easy-to-use tool of the 5 or 6 I tried. £40 needed to get rid of the invasive watermark, but it looks like when it comes to CASE tools you get what you pay for.
The lectures are proving tricky to keep on top of – the pace is kinda slow (maybe that’s just me), so I find myself struggling to maintain attention. Still, the lecture notes are very detailed, so I spent a a few hours reviewing last week’s notes creating myself some revision material. I’ve been using a piece of software called Freemind to do ‘mind-mapping’, something I found out about in a presentation by Steve Brett in last years’ unsheffield unconference. It seems to work pretty well for the way I do revision, here’s a screenshot if you’ve not seen a mind map before.
So anyway, it’s all good. Coursework part 2 starts now, two more lectures in this module.
Paul Brabban Computer Science, MSc
My Dell Vostro gave up the ghost a couple of days before the Software Development module was about to start. I tried the first day of the course without a laptop, but it wasn’t really working out so I bit the bullet and bought a new machine. I’ve only had it a couple of days, but so far I’m very happy with my new purchase. I’ll probably do a review after I’ve had it for long enough to judge, but here’s a photo of the new kit at the side of the old kit.
New HP dm3-1020ea (centre) versus Dell Vostro (right)
As for the course itself, day two brought in patterns to help understand the problem domain and patterns to help design at a higher level than software implementation, as defined by IBM.
The coursework requirements were also laid out.
15% will be a solution for a set of requirements, resulting in a object-oriented design for an electronics store. To be completed individually, assessment consists of UML Class diagrams in a 4-page report explaining how the classes solve the problems.
35% will be a 4-person team project, analysing a real e-business solution. Assessment will be a 15-page report, and includes team management aspects.
The other 50% will be assessed by exam around June.
Paul Brabban MSc