This case study looks at the requirements for an information system to manage the organisation of an international academic conference. An academic conference consists of presentations by people. The presentations could be presentation of papers or product demonstrations.

Papers or product demonstrations are made by researchers or industry professionals (a paper or product demonstration may have several contributing authors but it is submitted by only one of them - a researcher or industry professional may submit several papers/product demonstration).

Papers or product demonstrations are submitted by researchers or industry professionals but these need to be approved before being included in the conference (For any researcher/industry professional more than one presentation may be approved). In some cases, papers or product demonstrations may be rejected. In the end, all approved presentations need to be allocated a time and a room. People who make presentations or who wish to attend the conference need to register for the conference.

Anyone registering for the conference must submit his name, surname, title, address, telephone number, email, organisation, post. Even researchers/industry professionals making a presentation must register for the conference.

Anyone submitting a paper/product demonstration must provide title and an abstract giving more details on the presentation. Decisions concerning acceptance/rejection will be entered by the Conference Chair (i.e. the person responsible for all academic matters). In case of rejection, a reason will have to be input as well.

Scheduling of accepted presentations and speeches will be done by the Conference Secretary (i.e. the person responsible for all administrative matters). The duration of the presentations will be assumed to be standard and of about 1 hour. The system will have to ensure that there are no clashes (i.e. there are no 2 presentations in the same room at the same time or 2 people scheduled for different presentations at the same time but in different rooms).

Question 1:

(a) Assuming that a web-based system needs to be developed, that user interaction is important and that the requirements do not seem very clear (as it is the users' first experience), give an outline of an appropriate software process model for the development of the system.

(b) Justify your answer.

(c) Explain what is meant by verification and validation in software engineering.

(d) Describe any ONE technique for verification for the system to be developed.

(e) Describe any ONE technique for validation for the system to be developed.

Question 2:

(a) Identify actors (in the object oriented analysis context) in the system.

(b) Outline the main user requirements of the system.

(c) Draw an appropriate Use Case Model for the system.

(d) Identify classes of objects in the system.

(e) Build a Class Diagram for the system described in the Case Study. Identify all classes, relationships and attributes.

Question 3:

(a) What are the desired characteristics of an effective data model?

(b) Why is data redundancy not desirable in a data model?

(c) Assuming that for implementation of the system, a relational database management system is required, design the database for the system. List the entities, their attributes, clearly marking primary and foreign keys.