Audience
Team leaders, analysts, developers, testers and anyone involved in maintaining and documenting software systems will benefit from this training.
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Duration
5 days. Lecture presentations are supported by practical exercises which allow discussion, reinforcement of learning and enhancement of the understanding process.
This course is available on site only. Please call for details.
Course Objectives
Change is inherent in software. Whether a new program is being developed or an existing one being re-engineered, software is in a constant flux. Software maintenance takes up a large share of computing costs, 50 percent on average, but in some companies over 80 percent. Any solutions that can improve maintenance productivity are bound to have a dramatic impact on software costs and the overall profitability of companies. The maintenance problem may be exacerbated by a lack of understanding of the software functionality and database structure. All too often, this is compounded by out of date or missing documentation.
This course presents a method for documenting software in an incremental way so that work performed in documenting existing functionality and data is led by authorised changes or enhancements. This eliminates unnecessary project work. The course also includes industry standard techniques used in software design which help maintenance personnel understand the data and functionality they are dealing with.
This course will enable delegates to:
- Appreciate the nature and mechanisms involved in software maintenance.
- Understand the maintenance process so that it can be modified to meet the needs of individual organisations and projects.
- Make decisions about what to document and what techniques to use as part of the documentation.
- Use the appropriate technique in support of maintenance.
Course Content
Structured Maintenance
Typical problems with software maintenance.
Software changes, classification of changes.
Configuration management and version control.
Change requests and change control.
Maintenance documentation.
Structured maintenance method.
Logical and Physical Data Models
Types of database, relational databases.
Entities and attributes, primary key types.
Relationships and cardinality.
Optional attributes, exclusive and reflexive relationships.
Foreign keys and referential integrity.
Attribute data types, attribute constraints and default values.
Logical data models.
Physical data models.
Reversing Databases
Manual database reversal.
Identifying entities, keys, attributes and relationships
Drawing the data model diagram.
Documenting the data model, volumetrics.
Tools for database reversal.
Merging data models.
Stored procedures and triggers.
Normalising Data Models
Definition of normalisation.
Steps in normalising a data model.
First, second and third normal form.
TNF tests, foreign keys.
Data Flow Diagrams
Characteristics of data flow diagrams.
Notation.
Processes, data stores, data flows, external entities.
Data flow diagram hierarchy.
Lower level data flow diagram notation.
Balancing lower and higher level data flow diagrams.
Documenting data flow diagrams.
Process descriptions.
Use Case Diagrams
Elements of use case diagrams.
Actors and use cases.
Include and extend relationships.
Generalisations.
Documenting use cases.
Activity Diagrams
Elements of activity diagrams.
Activities, initial and final activities.
Decisions, signals.
Concurrent activities.
Swim lanes.
Reversing Code
Static program analysis.
Reverse engineering.
Data and processing cross-reference.
Web Site Navigation Diagrams
Simple navigation diagram.
Site matrix.
Site function diagram.
Tools for producing site maps.