A system is effective if it supports business requirements and meets user needs.

• A system is reliable if it handles input errors, processing errors, hardware

failures,
or human mistakes. A good design will anticipate errors, detect them
as early as possible, make it easy to correct them, and prevent them from
damaging
the system itself. Other characteristics of a reliable system include it
being available nearly all of the time, and proper backups maintained in case of
system
failure.
• A system is maintainable if it is flexible, scalable, and easily modified. Changes
might be needed to correct problems, adapt to user requirements, or take
advantage of new technology.

Draw a decision table or decision tree to represent the following situation:

Shady sellers operate a graded commission policy for their salesmen. The
company makes a distinction between products selling at more than £10,000
and items selling under this amount. Items above £10,000 are subject to a
commission rate of 16% if more than 500 items are sold and if the salesman's
salary is below £12,000 per annum. Salaries in the region of £12,000
to £20,000 gain a 14% commission on such items, and salaries above
£20,000 gain 12%. If less than 500 items are sold then the commission is
8%, 7% and 6% respectively for each of the above categories of salesmen.
For iteins having a value under £10,000, sales over 1000 items gain a 12%
commission for staff on salaries under £12,000. Those on £12,000 to £20,000
gain II% and those on £20,000 plus get 8%. Under 1000 items of this type of
product gain a 6%, 5% and 4% commission.
4. Represent the rules for transforming an E-R diagram into a relational schema
as an action diagram.
5. Produce a structured English description of the following scenario. The
current production controller at Goronwy describes how he produces a
despatch advice as follows: I look through my jobs file for completed jobs -
those where the completion indicator is set to Y. If there are enough of these
to fill a trailer I'll simply despatch these. I have to do a rough calculation on
job weights as the maximum loading on a trailer in 20 tonnes. If there are not
enough completed jobs I'll look through the file for jobs that have been
partially completed. I'll then part -despatch some or all of these jobs up to the
loading limit.

An interface is a method by which users interact with an information system

What is user centered design: (design techniques that embody the view that the user interface appears
to be the entire system),
An Example of Prototyping
Consider the case of building an information system for the motor claims
insurance business discussed in section 2.3. At present, the company runs an
entirely manual operation. There is also very little experience of computers in
the company. In this type of setting it is very difficult to establish a reasonable
set of requirements for the proposed IT system. Staff at the company have very
little idea of the potential of the technology. It would therefore seem reasonable
to build a small initial prototype to give them a feel for the functionality and
potentiality of the system. A single data entry screen perhaps emulating their
existing claims form would be a useful start. The next step might be to build a
simple report from the data entered via the screen. The whole purpose of the
exercise is to get the company to think about its business and how it might be
computerised.

Explain transaction analysis

Explain transform analysis. What is meant by the term central transforms

What is the difference between afferent and efferent data flow

Explain module coupling and module cohesion Why are these concepts important

Order system

Examination system

Payroll system

Student grade record system

Student Record system:

Order system

Payroll system: A system to calculate salary of employees, * based on the number

of hours they worked*, store and send employee payslip to them.

Define a control structure

The control structure is both call and return for transformational model and call and act for transactional
model.
Decision table .We don’t need some of the conditions to arrive at the action. So we just cancel/put a dash
there. Eg. Once you are not a preferred customer all the other conditions does not come into play, so we
put a dash there..

Decision tree

If it is yes there are other conditions for us to test, but if No there are no conditons and the action or output is $
bonus coupon

Strategies for identifying input, output and central transforms.

1. Identifying the highest level input and output transforms requires experience and skill. One
possible approach is to trace the inputs until a process is found whose output cannot be
deduced from its inputs alone. Processes which validate input or add information to them are
not central transforms. Processes which sort input or filter data from it are.
2. To identify high-level inputs we start at the extreme physical inputs to the system and move
inward along the flows of the DFD until we identify a set of data flows that can no longer be
considered as incoming.
High-level outputs are those data elements that are furthest removed from physical outputs
but which still may be regarded as outgoing.