System Analysis and Design (MC161) : october 2006

Section A : Basic Concepts (30 Marks)
This section consists of questions with serial number 1 - 30.
Answer all questions.
Each question carries one mark.
Maximum time for answering Section A is 30 Minutes.
1. There are six categories of information systems that use a computer. Five of them are operational systems, management information systems, expert systems, office systems, executive information systems. What is the other?
(a) Transaction processing systems (b) Application systems (c) Decision support systems
(d) AI systems (e) Manual systems.
2. What does the system development life cycle begins with?
(a) Problem definition (b) Preliminary investigation (c) Systems request (d) System requirements document (e) Testing.
3. Who is the person who investigates, analyzes, designs, develops, installs, evaluates, and maintains a company's information systems?
(a) Upper manager (b) Systems analyst (c) Project leader (d) Team leader (e) Lower manager.
4. If a company states that its goal is to “supply customers worldwide with a variety of high quality products and services that meet and exceed their requirements”, in which document would you most likely find this statement?
(a) Systems request (b) Feasibility study (c) Mission statement (d) Preliminary investigation report (e) Design report.
5. Which feasibility factor determines whether management supports a project or not?
(a) Economic (b) Operational (c) Strategic (d) Technical (e) Manual.
6. Which feasibility factor determines whether the impact of a new system on current users of the hardware or not?
(a) Economic (b) Operational (c) Strategic (d) Technical (e) Manual.
7. Which factor for which it is difficult to assign a dollar value?
(a) Tangible (b) Intangible (c) Nondiscretionary (d) Discretionary (e) Economical.
8. Who is likely to be interviewed during a preliminary investigation?
(a) The chairman of the board (b) The company's president (c) Managers and supervisors
(d) Operational personnel (e) The company’s vice president.
9. What is the process of discovering how an original system functioned before it was modified called?
(a) Fact-finding (b) Observation (c) Reverse engineering (d) Forward engineering
(e) Questionnaire.
10. Patient billing input into the billing system must be sent to the patient's insurance company. To Which system requirement does the given statement belong to?
(a) Output (b) Process (c) Control (d) Input (e) Input or Output.
11. How many personal computers do you have in this department? To which question does this belong to?
(a) Closed-ended (b) Open-ended (c) Survey (d) Range of responses (e) Investigation.
12. What is systems analyst’s primary responsibility during an interview?
(a) Ask questions (b) Take notes (c) Listen (d) Smile (e) Neglect the system requirements.
13. Which is an appropriate example for a data store name?
(a) Out standing Checks (b) Determine the highest Test score awarded (c) Assign Account Number (d) Credit Union (e) Processing data.
14. Which of the following symbol is not shown in a context diagram?
(a) Process (b) Data flow (c) Data store (d) External entity (e) Destination.
15. Which document contains the requirements for the new system which describes the alternatives that were considered, and makes a specific recommendation to management?
(a) System requirements document
(b) Software requirements specification
(c) Systems implementation specification
(d) Both (a) and (b) above
(e) Both (b) and (c) above.
16. Which is an example of a CASE tool?
(a) Microsoft Access
(b) IBM Cross System Product
(c) Visible Analyst
(d) Database
(e) Microsoft Word.
17. To which CASE tools do code generators and testing tools belong?
(a) Diagramming
(b) Prototyping
(c) Programming
(d) Project management
(e) Project scheduling.
18. If one occurrence of the first entity can be related to many occurrences of the second entity. To which relationship
does this statement belong to?
(a) One-to-one
(b) One-to-many
(c) Many-to-many
(d) Either (b) or (c) above
(e) Either (a) or (b) above.
19. Which of the following activities are not completed during the systems implementation phase?
(a) Testing
(b) Training
(c) Documentation
(d) Program coding
(e) Design.
20. How a project manager can also be called as?
(a) Chief programmer
(b) Principal user
(c) Lead analyst
(d) Project leader
(e) Software engineer.
21. Which one of the following is/are the explanatory part of the UML model?
(a) Dependency
(b) Association
(c) Generalization
(d) Annotational things
(e) Realization.
22. What does 0..1 represent?
(a) Zero elements
(b) Zero or one element
(c) Three elements
(d) Four elements
(e) One element.
23. What is called as the span of time between two major milestones of the process?
(a) Phase
(b) Development
(c) Process
(d) Design
(e) Analysis.
24. Which relationship between use cases means that the base use case explicitly incorporates the behaviour of another
use case at a location specified in the base?
(a) Inheritance
(b) Include
(c) Aggregation
(d) Association
(e) Extends.
25. How a node is represented in deployment diagram?
(a) Cube
(b) Rectangle
(c) Square
(d) Circle
(e) Triangle.
26. What an executable version of the system called as?
(a) Matter
(b) Product
(c) Entity
(d) Build
(e) Object.
27. Which will allow one to build models of objects which are easy to use and easy to understand so that programmers can easily write software?
(a) C++
(b) C
(c) UML
(d) Java
(e) Oracle.
28. Which can used for non-operational prototypes?
(a) Focus
(b) Oracle
(c) Ramis
(d) Visual Basic
(e) Word Processor.
29. Acceptance testing is performed by
(a) Customers
(b) Users
(c) Testers
(d) Either (b) or (c) above
(e) Either (a) or (b) above.
Section B : Problems/Caselet (50 Marks)
This section consists of questions with serial number 1 – 5.
Answer all questions.
Marks are indicated against each question.
Detailed workings/explanation should form part of your answer.
Do not spend more than 110 - 120 minutes on Section B.
1. The Blood Bank Testing Unit. This is one unit within the College Street Red Cross Blood Donor
Centre.On the day following a blood donation, the Blood Bank unit tests all blood for blood type and potential viral agents. They send the results of these tests to the Processing Office (another unit of the Centre). For each tested blood unit, they fill out a form which lists the blood unit number, the blood type, the date and the results of the test. If the tests indicate that the blood may be contaminated with a viral agent, the blood unit is destroyed. This is indicated on the test form.Blood units have a limited shelf life. The Blood Bank receives a list every day of those units
which have exceeded their shelf life. These are discarded and the list sent back to the Processing
Office with a signed indication of the disposal of the units.The Blood Bank also distributes blood to various hospitals requesting blood. Requests usually come in for specific blood types. The Blood Bank prepares refrigerated containers of these units and distributes them to the hospital vans when they arrive to pick up their supply. The Blood Bank receives a listing for each
hospital and the specific units of blood to supply to the hospital from the Processing Office. The
order is printed in triplicate. When the order is filled, the lab technician signs the order and returns a copy to the Processing Office. A copy of it travels with the blood to the requesting hospital. The final copy is kept in the Blood Bank records but discarded after one year.
Draw a context data flow diagram for the Blood Bank Testing Unit System. (10 marks)
Caselet
Read the caselet carefully and answer the following question:
2. Identify the actors, Use cases, Potential Classes and identify the static relationships between the classes identified in and indicate the cardinality of the appropriate relationships.(12 marks)
Video library
Tirumala video Library specializes in obscure videos. It lends videos only to members of the video society, which is part of an exclusive and very expensive Gentlemen’s club. Any member of the club automatically becomes a member of the video society. New members are admitted only on 1st January each year. The library is set up along conventional lines, but there are no restrictions on the number of videos members may borrow at any one time. Videos have to be returned only if required by another member. Most of the active users of the library regularly change their videos. Two or three copies of popular titles are available.
In order to borrow a video, a member selects it, takes it to the issue desk and gives the video and his club membership card, to the librarian. The librarian takes the video ID card from the video sleeve and adds the membership number to the card. The librarian then places the card into the loan file and member leaves with his video and his club membership card. This same procedure is followed in respect of each video borrowed.
When a member returns a video, he hands over the video to the librarian. The librarian finds the video card in the loans file and places the card in the video sleeve before returning the video to the library shelves not forgetting to remove the member number from the video card.
To reserve a video which is already on loan, the member gives the details of the video and the membership number to the librarian. The librarian finds the relevant video card in the loans file, and adds the member’s number to the reservation column on the video card. The librarian also makes a note of the member who has the video on loan and completes a return request card addressed to the member. The address is taken from the library copy of the club membership book. When the reserved video is returned, the librarian puts the video under the counter and completes a reservation ready card addressed to the member who requested the reservation. The member requiring the video can then pick the video up from the library and have it issued in the usual manner. Members make many inquiries from the librarian. Typical questions include- ‘”Is the video titled ‘abc’ on loan?”, “Which videos did actor ‘xyz’ appear in? “, “Have you got any videos on subject ‘def’?” and so forth. The librarian is able to answer these questions by inspecting the loan file, the actor index, the subject index and the title index. In addition to the above duties, the librarian receives new videos from the social committee of the club. On receipt of a new video, the librarian has to make a video card for insertion in the video sleeve and then insert relevant entries for the indexes. The librarian is also responsible for amending the library copy of the membership book with changes of the addresses and at the end of the year, collecting the new membership book from the club secretary.
Note: The selection, ordering and payments for the videos are not considered relevant within the terms of the case study.
3. Design the software to support a computerized banking network including both human cashiers and automated teller machines (ATMs) to be shared by a consortium of banks. Each bank provides its own computer to maintain its own accounts and process transactions against them. Cashier stations are owned by individual banks and communicate directly with their own bankcomputers. Human cashiers enter account and transaction data. ATM’s communicate with a central computer which clears transactions with the appropriate banks. An ATM accepts a cash card, interacts with the user, communicates with the central system to carry out the transaction, dispenses cash and prints receipts. The system requires appropriate record keeping and security provisions. The system must handle concurrent accesses to the same account correctly. The banks will provide their own software for their own computers; you are to design the software for the ATM’s and the network. The cost of the shared system will be apportioned to the banks according to the number of customers with cash cards.
Prepare Class diagram for the above caselet. (10 marks)
5. Give comment on the below diagram. Write a short note on the Components present in the
diagram. (8 marks)
Section C : Applied Theory (20 Marks)
This section consists of questions with serial number 6 - 7.
Answer all questions.
Marks are indicated against each question.
Do not spend more than 25 -30 minutes on section C.
6. Define JAD. Who are the people involved with JAD. Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of JAD. (10 marks)
7. List out the top ten errors made by the students while designing the Use cases. (10 marks)
Suggested Answers
1. Answer : (c)
Reason: The six categories of information systems that use a computer are operational systems, management information systems, expert systems, office systems, executive information systems, and decision support systems.
2. Answer : (c)
Reason: The development of any new system starts with systems request.
3. Answer : (b)
Reason: System analyst is the person who investigates, analyzes, designs, develops, installs, evaluates, and maintains a company's information systems.
4. Answer : (b)
Reason: The description of high quality products and services which meet and exceed their requirements is found in Feasibility Study. found in Feasibility Study.
5. Answer : (b)
Reason: Operational feasibility determines whether management supports a project or not.
6. Answer : (d)
Reason: Technical Feasibility determines whether the impact of new system on current users of the hard wares or not.
7. Answer : (b)
Reason: Intangible is factor for which it is difficult to assign a dollar value.
8. Answer : (c)
Reason: During a preliminary investigation, a systems analyst is most likely to interview managers and supervisors.
9. Answer : (c)
Reason: The process of discovering how an original system functioned before it was modified is called as reverse engineering.
10. Answer : (d)
Reason: Input system requirement is the apt choice
11. Answer : (a)
Reason: Close ended questions are that wherein an exact statement or value is expected
12. Answer : (c)
Reason: Systems analyst primary responsibility is to listen first.
13. Answer : (a)
Reason: Outstanding Checks is the apt choice.
14. Answer : (c)
Reason: Data store is not shown in context diagram.
15. Answer : (d)
Reason: The SRS and SRD contains the requirements for the new system, describes the alternatives that were considered, and makes a specific recommendation to management
16. Answer : (c)
Reason: Visible Analyst is the example of Case Tool.
17. Answer : (c)
Reason: Code generators and testing tools are examples of programming CASE Tools.
18. Answer : (b)
Reason: B is the right choice.
19. Answer : (b)
Reason: Training is given before the sytem is put into practice.
20. Answer : (d)
Reason: Project manager might be called as project leader.
21. Answer : (d)
Reason: Annotational things are the explanatory parts of the UML models.
22. Answer : (b)
Reason: Zero or One element.
23. Answer : (a)
Reason: Phase is the span of time between two major milestones of the process.
24. Answer : (b)
Reason: An include relationship between use cases means that the base use case explicitly incorporates the behavior of another use case at a location specified in the base.
25. Answer : (a)
Reason: Nodes in deployment diagram are represented by Cube
26. Answer : (d)
Reason: Build is an executable version of the system.
27. Answer : (c)
Reason: UMl allows one to build easy to use and easy to understand models of objects so that programmers can easily write software.
28. Answer : (e)
Reason: Word processors can be used for “non-operational” prototypes e.g. input and output screens
29. Answer : (e)
Reason: Customers or users perform the acceptance testing.