Practical Software Engineering: A Case-Study Approach

The distinctive character of this book stems from two endeavors. First, this book is about the way software engineering is done in practice. Second, it is about software engineering for enterprise applications. ¿Enterprise applications include payroll, patient records, shipping tracking, cost analysis, credit scoring, insurance, supply chain, accounting, customer service, and foreign exchange trading. Enterprise applications don¿t include automobile fuel injection, word processors, elevator controllers, chemical plant controllers, telephone switches, operating systems, compilers, and games.¿ (Fowler, 2003, p.3). The book is pivoted on one main case-study, a large number of supporting examples, and end-of-chapter problem-solving exercises consisting of case-study exercises and minicases. A particular organization that the case-study, problem-solving exercises and most examples are derived from is a company specializing in advertising expenditure measurement. The book endeavors to give broad software engineering knowledge and to provide background information prior to presenting case-study solutions. However, a distinguishing emphasis of the book is to concentrate on support skills for system design and programming. For given requirements, the book iteratively develops design and implementation models. Case-study, examples and problem-solving exercises are carefully selected to emphasize various aspects of software development as necessitated by unique characteristics of different applications and target software solutions.  The book consists of four parts. Part A (Software projects) discusses software lifecycle, software engineering tools, project planning, budgeting and scheduling, project quality, risk management, and change management. The next three parts (B, C, and D) concentrate on methods, techniques, processes, and development environments of software engineering.  The case-study, examples and problem-solving exercises are based on the experience gained from a large ACNielsen project. For pedagogical reasons, industrial problems and solutions have been simplified and re-implemented specifically for the purpose of the book. Occasionally, for comparative purposes, more than one programming environment has been used in presented solutions. All programming code, including code not presented in the text, is available on the book¿s website. The code is mostly Java accessing Oracle database.      

How is software engineering done in practice? More specifically, how should today's enterprise applications be developed? This example-focused book has the answers.

Practical Software Engineering

shows how to relate theories to industry practice by concentrating on systems design and implementation and by addressing non-trivial practical problems. It pivots on one main and two mini case studies, specially adapted to draw out educational points, and is loaded with supporting examples and tutorials.

This book provides broad coverage of software engineering for the development of large systems. It gives thorough treatment of the development lifecycle, modeling languages, engineering tools, project planning and process management. Iterative and incremental development is explained through three iterations of the main case study. In addition the book:

• Emphasizes object-oriented modeling and programming
• Makes extensive use of UML and patterns for requirements analysis and detailed design
• Recognizes the importance of databases and data engineering within software engineering
• Explains and uses components and business objects
• Covers multi-tier solutions including GUI and web clients, extending to databases via web and application servers
• Highlights application architectural design and refactoring
• Contains a CD with software development tools, case study models and Java and database code, and all figures from the book
• Is accompanied by a comprehensive website: www.booksites.net/maciaszek.

The book will change the way students learn about software engineering and will help IT professionals with their software development practices. It will also be a source of new development ideas and directions.

Leszek Maciaszek is an Associate Professor of Computing at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He is an academic and industry consultant working mainly in the design and implementation of enterprise applications, databases, and object technology. His other books include Database Design and Implementation (Prentice Hall, 1990) and Requirements Analysis and Systems Design, 2nd edition (Addison Wesley, 2005).

Bruc Lee Liong is also at Macquarie University. He has been developing object-oriented applications for the past eight years. He specializes in enterprise integration, linking application clients with web and application services down to databases.

Stephen Bills is the Media Systems Director for Nielsen Media Research in Sydney - Australia. He has been developing systems and consulted to large corporations and government for over 30 years.