All posts by Mr Stratton

Computing teacher and a PT at Coltness High School.
2. Software Development, Computing Higher, Revision

Personnel in software development

  • Identification of the personnel at each stage and brief description of their roles
    • client
    • systems analyst
    • project manager
    • programmer
    • independent test group

The roles of people in the software development process were covered in the course, let’s go back over them.

The client awards the contract to a software house, they are involved in the analysis stage to answer questions and help create the software specification. The may be used at the testing stage to perform testing on the final product. Their involvent is not required at the other stages as the software specification should give the software hues all the info they need.

Systems analysist works with the client to produce the software specificatio, they are also involved with the design team to help clarify any points in the specification.

The project manager is responsible for the project being delivered on time and in budget, they do not need to have programming experience although this helps. They are involved at all stages of the process.

Programers are involved at the design, implementation, testing, documentation & maintance stages and are responsible for producing a working and correct program.

Independant test groups are used to test the program, this is sometimes classed beta testing. Not being part of the programming teams gives them a more objective view of the program. Often these testing groups are made up of members of it he public as well as specialists.

1. Computer Systems, FAQ, Revision

FAQ – Hub or Switch

Simple description  of the functions  and  uses of a hub, switch and router

  • Hub
    • A Hub is a multi-port repeater. That means that data coming into one port is sent out of all other ports. This can result in congestion on the network as machines are swamped with data that id not for them, resulting in a slow down of network performance. A 100Mbps hub shares this with all machines, so each machine only gets a fraction of the speed.
  • Switch
    • A switch keeps a database of each machine on the network and which port of the switch they are connected to. These collision domains are controlled by the switch, which then results in a reduction of the number of collisions increasing the overall speed of the network. A 100Mbps switch gives each machine 100Mbps.
  • Router
    • A router is a device with two network cards that is responsible for routing data from one network to another. It does this by keeping track of IP addresses of computers on the networks and forwarding packets appropriately.

Remember the warriors of the net video is a good lead in, but look up the terms online.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/PBWhzz_Gn10" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

Computing Higher, Revision

Games to pass the time

OK so you are past paper’ed out and couldn’t read another paragraph or write another flash card.

Well its quiz time, you can even try and check your glossary skills. Crosswords might be your thing. If you are going to go ofline for a bit then print out some sheets for later.

Quizes are great but they are even better when you learn from them, so keep a note of the ones you get wrong and search for them as part of your study. Build in quizzes to your study or make your own.

Continue reading Games to pass the time →

Computing Higher, NAB, Revision

Question make up

The higher paper is made up of both KU and PS questions, just like the standard grade. If you don’t believe it have a look in a marking scheme.

The image above is taken from the arrangements document, it gives you a list of keywords you can use to identify KU & PS questions. Remember that it is important to answer all questions in the context they were given. So for a question about “surequickfit”, you should mention “surequickfit” in your answer as well as relate to their problem. The breakdown of the assessment is below. Continue reading Question make up →

1. Computer Systems, Computing Higher

Our new PCs

2 Comments

Well I finished setting up the new machines today, and even as I type this, the network should have finished installing software on them and is shutting them down.

I took one of the machines out for a bit of a test to see what it could do, but before I comment on that, lets look at the specs.

  • i5-2400 processor
  • 4GB RAM
  • Windows XP 32bit
  • 512MB GPU (can’t remember the model right now except it was a radeon)

The machines are in a slimline case and look OK for a HP.  I loaded up most of the games that were too slow for my old machines; warsow, world of padman, etc. I set the graphics options to max and had a look at the frames per second – rock solid on 75+FPS, which means they should be fast enough for anything we want to do.

One thing though, the desktops are only reporting 3GB, why is that and what can we do about it?