Contemporary Application Development Methods

The subject offers an introduction to modern application development techniques and tools, with particular emphasis on rapid prototyping, data access, object-oriented concepts and visual development environments, including some basic guidelines of user interface design.

1. Introduce students to the main concepts of object-oriented programming and design;
2. Introduce students to the Unified Modelling Language notation (UML) for expressing simple object-oriented designs;
3. Introduce students to the concept of rapid prototyping, and how to approach rapid prototyping methodically;
4. Make students aware of the facilities available in a typical modern visual development environment (e.g., Visual Basic, Delphi, Visual J++, C++ Builder);
5. Introduce students to guidelines of good user interface design.

Programme Content and Learning Objectives

After completing the programme, the student should be able to:

1. Explain the main concepts of object-orientation;
2. Design a simple object-oriented application;
3. Express a simple object-oriented design using a subset of the Unified Modelling Language(UML);
4. Describe in detail the iterative prototyping lifecycle, and discuss where the rapid prototyping approach is likely to be useful, and why;
5. Describe the essential features of a modern visual development environment which enable rapid application development, especially with regard to database applications;
6. Explain the eight golden rules of user interface design.

Syllabus Content

1. Object-Oriented Concepts
   Object, state and properties, behaviour and methods, encapsulation, information hiding, class, inheritance, polymorphism. Object relationships, class relationships
2. The Unified Modelling Language
   The diagrammatic notations for objects, classes, inheritance diagrams, state charts, use cases, sequence diagrams.
3. Object-Oriented Design
   A simple object-oriented design method, based on identifying classes, responsibilities and collaborations (CRC).
4. Rapid Prototyping
   The iterative prototyping lifecycle: specification of first iteration prototype, identifying evaluation criteria, building the prototype, evaluation, specification of next iteration prototype.
5. Visual Development Environments
   Event-driven environments, visual layout facilities, controls (visual and non-visual), properties, methods, events. Database access, building front ends for simple database applications.
6. User Interface Design Guidelines
   Consistency, shortcuts, informative feedback, closure, error handling, undo facilities, internal locus of control, reducing short-term memory load.