All Class announcements will be made here.
SE2: Software Design and Architecture is the second course of the three software engineering capstone project courses, offered jointly by the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.
Lectures notes will be posted in Learn on Monday and Wednesday by 10 AM (I will strive to upload them even before but if you look into Learn by 10 AM on Mon/Wed you should be able to see them).
Anecdotal Spring 2020 feedback from students indicate that detailed lecture notes were more useful than long videos. That is what I will strive to do in this course. In places where I deem videos will be useful, I will make them available. Otherwise it will be detailed slides with possible annotation from me.
Official administrative entry and outline.
Important dates and information will be posted here on this website. The official syllabus is also the contents on this website. You can reach this website from the corresponding entry in learn.uwaterloo.ca.
While the course does not have a required textbook, the following are good readings on this subject.
This term we will be using Learn for class discussion. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, I encourage you to post your questions on Learn.
If you need to ask a question regarding the grades or something personal then please email the instructor. Prefix the subject line with CS446/ECE452/CS646 for a prompt reply.
All TAs will be answering questions mostly only on Learn. If there is a specific need to actually talk to a TA, please email them to get a virtual meeting link that can be used. They have preferred times set up (below). Please try to schedule during these times as much as possible.
The class will use the Learn system for all submissions and grades. Once you are registered, you will be able to access learn and check the dropboxes for submissions and view your grades.
Date | Topics | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|
Jan. 11 | Introduction to the Class, Expectations, Admin | Slides, Video | |
Jan. 13 | Introduction to Software Architecture | Slides, Video | |
Jan. 18 | Non-Functional Properties | Slides & Video | |
Jan. 20 | Intro to building Android apps - Part 1 | Video #1, Video #2, Video #3, Video #4 | |
Jan. 25 | Intro to building Android apps - Part 2 | Video #5, Video #6, Video #7, Video #8 | |
Jan. 27 | Intro to UML for Architecture and Design | Slides, Video | |
Feb. 1 | Architectural views & decomposition | Slides, Video | |
Feb. 3 | Project Scheduling | Slides, Video | |
Feb. 8 | Cost Estimation | Slides, Video, Optional Reading | |
Feb. 10 | Project Proposal Prep. No class. | ||
Feb. 15 | Reading week. No class. | ||
Feb. 17 | Reading week. No class. | ||
Feb. 22 | Architectural Styles Intro | Slides, Video | |
Feb. 24 | Architectural Styles - Part 1 | Slides, Video | |
Mar. 1 | Architectural Styles - Part 2 | Slides, Video | |
Mar. 3 | Design Patterns - Intro | Slides, Video | |
Mar. 8 | Design Patterns - Part 1 | Slides, Video | |
Mar. 10 | Design Patterns - Part 2 | Slides, Video | |
Mar. 15 | Scheduled pause due to COVID-19. No class. | ||
Mar. 17 | Design Patterns - Part 3 | Slides, Video | |
Mar. 22 | Release Engineering - Part 1 | Slides, Video | |
Mar. 24 | Release Engineering - Continuous Experimentation | Slides, Video | |
Mar. 29 | Project finalization. No class. | ||
Mar. 31 | Project finalization. No class. | ||
Apr. 5 | Final demos | ||
Apr. 7 | Final exam | ||
Apr. 12 | Final exam |
The project forms an integral part of this course. Here are some of the hard requirements:
The two goals of the project are to
There are only three restrictions on the app idea itself:
If after the proposal, we feel that the app idea is too simple or too easy, then we will provide the team with a basic idea. The teams will then have to implement our suggested idea. We highly encourage the teams to come up with their own creative ideas. See below for some ideas from past projects.
Pivot: After the prototype demo, we will provide a 'pivot' to each group; this will consist of a new or modified requirement for your app that you will have to include for the final demo (and write about in the architecture and design deliverable).
The projects will be completed in teams of six. If your team has fewer or more than six members, you must request permission from the instructor. You may form your own teams; if you do not have a team or your team has fewer than six members, please post on the appropriate Learn thread.Project grades need not be the same for all team members. Each team member will get a score based on effort. Additionally, projects will have a difficulty scale applied to them by the instructor and TAs. The scale formula will be:
(total project score for the team member across all deliverables + bonus) * (scale/100) = final project gradeScale will range between 0 and 100. The components of the scaling mark will be determined by:
https://developer.android.com/studio/install
Use the above link to start installing Android Studio in Linux/Win/Mac Machines beforehand. The download size may vary based on the operating system/region and locale (800 MB) for Android Studio alone. Always choose the latest version of Android Studio and corresponding Gradle plugin to build APK files, which helps in reviewing code and evaluation.
SDK Installation: Use the latest Stable Android Version for SDK Compilation rather than the beta version. The preferable version can be from Android M (API 23) to Android R (API 30). As soon as installing the Android Studio, start selecting the preferred android version (at least 1) and download the corresponding emulator, SDK Library, SDK Build Tools, and other utilities. Expect to allocate roughly 20 GB of storage for Android Studio and SDK installations. A stable internet connection is needed to complete all of the installation steps.
Emulator vs. Android Phone: You may use an Android mobile device to test your apps by connecting it via USB for debugging. This should reduce the impact on your system's resources while building Android apps. Otherwise, you may install an x86 Google Play/Google API endorsed Android emulator for testing. Do not install ARM or other architecture types that are not optimized for cold startup/booting.
Reliable Network Connection: Ensure that you are connected to a reliable broadband network connection for downloading Android Studio and the SDK(s). Additional data will be required while using third party libraries to build an application or while syncing via Gradle.
This playlist is a selection of past project videos to provide insight into the expected scope of projects for this course.
In total, there will be ten quizzes.
The quizzes are to be completed individually and should take no more than 20 minutes if you have gone through the material.
There will be no written finals in this course. Instead we will do an oral exam. Details are below:
Deliverable | Date | Format | Value |
---|---|---|---|
Quiz 1 | Jan. 15 | On Learn | 3% |
Project Team Selection | Jan. 22 | On Learn | No Grade |
Quiz 2 | Jan. 22 | On Learn | 3% |
Quiz 3 | Jan. 29 | On Learn | 3% |
Quiz 4 | Feb. 5 | On Learn | 3% |
Quiz 5 | Feb. 12 | On Learn | 3% |
D1: Proposal Document | Feb. 19 | Upload to Learn | 5% |
Quiz 6 | Feb. 26 | On Learn | 3% |
Quiz 7 | Mar. 5 | On Learn | 3% |
D2: Architecture Style Examples | Mar. 12 | Upload to Learn | 10% |
Quiz 8 | Mar. 12 | On Learn | 3% |
D3: Prototype Document + Demo | Mar. 19 | Upload to Learn | 10% |
Quiz 9 | Mar. 19 | On Learn | 3% |
Quiz 10 | Mar. 26 | On Learn | 3% |
D4: Design Pattern Examples | Mar. 26 | Upload to Learn | 10% |
D5: Arch + Design Document | Apr. 2 | Upload to Learn | 10% |
D6: Final Documentation + Video | Apr. 7 (Note this is a Wed) | Upload to Learn | 5% |
Oral Exam | Apr 12 - 16 | Virtually | 20% |
For graduate students (CS 646), in addition to the project and other assessments above, you will perform an individual graduate project. The graduate project is worth 25% of your grade; your final grade will be calculated by scaling down the above assessments from 100% to 75%.
Three types of graduate projects are possible:
The goal of this style of project is to identify some problem developers encounter in practice, find some solution, and validate that the solution helps with the initial problem. I would recommend drawing upon your experience as you write code to address a problem that has inhibited you in the past.
The outcome of this project will be a short (5-6 page) paper describing the problem, your solution, a comparison to related approaches, and an evaluation of the soolution.
The goal of this kind of project is to gain a more complete understanding of a topic relevant to this course. The outcome of this project will be a critical summary of the state-of-the-art on your selected topic; this summary should be 8-10 pages. It is essential that this summary synthesizes the surveyed literature to identify important themes, findings, and open questions.
The goal of this project is to provide a validation of some previously-existing development tool from the research community. The tool you validate must be related to the course material. The outcome of this project will be a 6-8 page paper describing your experience with the tool outlining its strengths, weaknesses, and avenues for future improvement.
There are two deliverables for the graduate project: