Hamid-World

Course Code : CS-05
Course Title : Elements of System Analysis and Design
Assignment Number : BCA (3)-05/Assignment/ 2008
Maximum Marks : 25
Last date of Submission : 30th April, 2008/30th October, 2008

Question:- 1 What do you mean by the term Management Information System (MIS)? Does system analysis have any role/relevance in building MIS?

Ans:-
Management Information system (MIS):-
Defination:- An information system that integrates data from all the departments it serves and provides opetations and management with the information they required.
The term "management information system" (MIS) is synonymous with computer based systems. Used broadly, it is seen as system satisfyuing all the information needs of managers. MIS is the study of providing information to the people who make choices about the disposition of valuable resources in a timely, accurate, and complete manner at a minimum of cognitive and econimic cost for acquistion, processing, storage, and retrieval.
Another definition emphasises the use to which the information is put, rather than the way it is produced : "A system to convert data from internal and external sources into information and communicate that information in an appropriate from, to managers at all levels in all functions to enable, them to make timely and effective decisions for planning, directing and controlling the activities for which they are responsible.
Management Information system (MIS) is basically converned with processing data into information which is then communicate to the various departments in an organization for appropriate dession-making.

Data ---> Information ---> Communication ---> Decision

System Analysis:-
System analysis is the study of a system under consideration. Its purpose is understanding and documentation of the essential characteristics of the system being studied. Its evential goal is to come up with a specification of the system under study. Systems analysis is not a preliminary study. It is an in-depth study of the end user information need that produces funtional requirements that are used as the basis for the design of a management information system. System analysis traditionally involves a detailed study of :

-- The information need of a company and end users.
-- The activities, resources, and products of one or more of the present informationsystems being used.
-- The informationsystem capabilities required to meet your information needs, and those of other stokeholds that might use the system.

The need of for system analysis stems from the following points :=-

-- system objective : It is necessary to define the system objectives.
-- System Boundaries : The boundaries define the scope and the coverage of the MIS.
-- System Importance : It through light on the utility of the system and helps the designer to decide the design features of the system.
-- Nature : The analysis helps the system designer to conclude whether the system is closed or open, and a deterministic or probabilistic system.
-- Participation of Users : Systems analysis process provides a sense of participation to the people. The helps in reducing resistance to change.
-- Resourse requirements : Analysis helps in specifying the resource requirements in terms of hardware and software.




Question:-2 What is system life cycle? What is the utility of system life cycle in system analysis? Give detail description of the techniques involved in system analysis?

Ans:- System life cycle:- The course of developmental changes through which a system passes from its conception to the termination of its use and sybsequent salvage.
The utility of system life cycle in system analysis:-
Unsolved.
Following are the techniques of system analysis:
i) Requirement Analysis:- Requirement determination is generally done through extensive studey of the system including the understanding of the goals, processes and constraints of the system for which information systems are designed.
ii) Diagramming Techniques:- Data flow and document flow diagrams represent perhaps the most widely used diagramming techniques.
iii) Feasibility report:- A typical structure of the feasibility report will be as under:
A preamble that sets the stage for the project, followed by goals statement that quantifies precisely the goals of the proposed information system. This is followed by a short narrative that describes in unambiguous yet jorgon free language in the present system.
iv) System Implementation:- System implementation includes the detailed design of the process, their validation and thorough checking.




Question:-3 What do you mean by re-engineering of an organisation? comment on the statement "we should appreciate the need of 're-engineering' an organization rather than merely computerising the existing manual procedures"?

Ans:- Re-engineering:- Re-engineering is the process of radical redesign of an organization processes, especially its business processes.
Above statement says that " Rather than organaizing a firm into functional specialties (like production, accounting, marketing etc.) and look at the tasks that each function performs, we should according to the reegineering theory, be looking at complete processes from materials acquisition, to production, to marketing and distribution. The firm should be re-engineered into a series of processes."



Question:-4 How can you evaluate a software? Give details of the various approaches of software evalution? While considering the acquisition of a propriety software package, which technical charateristic must be taken into account?

Ans:-
Various approaches of software evaluation :
Sometimes you will be faced with software choices. In all categories of resources that are available for the classroom, for example, there is a wide variety of qualities; some are excellent and some are absolutely terrible. Therefore, you should be prepared to systematically examine computer software, as you would a book or film, before you use it. Now the question arises that, How should you evaluate software?
So, the various approaches for software evaluation are given as follows :
i) BENCHMARKING : Benchmark is nothing but a sample program specially designed to evaluate the comparative performance of hardware or software.
ii)EXPERIENCE OF OTHER USERS : Vendors generally gives a list of users who are satisfied with their work. But it is advisable to seek the opinion independently from the existing users whose configuration and operational environment is closely idntical.
iii) REPORT OF INDEPENDENT RESEARCH ORGANISATION : Now-a-days many research organisations undertake project of evaluating the proprietary software offered by various software agencies. These evaluations are objective and prospective buyer of a software package can have faith in their evaluation.




Question:-5 Give details description on following:
a) Role of testing in software quality assurance.
b) Utility of decision tables and decision trees in software development.
c) Edge of database systems over file base systems.

Ans:-
a) Role of testing in software quality assurance.
The quality assurance goal of testing pahse is to ensure completeness and accurace of the system and to eliminate errors, so as to minimize the retesting process. This is extremely difficult, time consuming, and quite expensive process, since designers cannot prove 100 percent(100%) accurace. Therefore, all that can be done is to put the system through a "fail test" cycle determine what will make it fail. A successful test, then, is done that finds errors.

b) Decision table
Decision tables make it easy to observe that all possible conditions are accounted for. In decision tables, when conditions are omitted, it is obvious even at a glance that logic is missing. Compare this to traditional control structures, where it is not easy to notice gaps in program logic with a mere glance --- sometimes it is difficult to follow which conditions correspond to which actions!
Just as decision tables make it easy to audit control logic, decision tables demand that a programmer think of all possible conditions. With traditional control structures, it is easy to forget about corner cases, especially when the else statement is optional. Since logic is so important to programming, decision tables are an excellent tool for designing control logic. In one incredible anecdote, after a failed 6 man-year attempt to describe program logic for a file maintenance system using flow charts, four people solved the problem using decision tables in just sixteen man-weeks

Decision tree :
In operation research, specifically in decision analysis, a decision tree (or tree diagram) is a decision support tool that uses a graph or model of decisions and their possible consequences, including chance event outcomes, resource costs, and utility. A decision tree is used to identify the strategy most likely to reach a goal. Another use of trees is as a descriptive means for calculating conditional probabilities.
In data mining and machine learning, a decision tree is a predictive model; that is, a mapping from observations about an item to conclusions about its target value. More descriptive names for such tree models are classification tree (discrete outcome) or regression tree (continuous outcome). In these tree structures, leaves represent classifications and branches represent conjunctions of features that lead to those classifications. The machine learning technique for inducing a decision tree from data is called decision tree learning, or (colloquially) decision trees.
In decision analysis, a "decision tree" — and a closely related model form, an influence diagram — is used as a visual and analytical decision support tool, where the expected values (or expected utility) of competing alternatives are calculated.



Quesion:-6 A student of BCA final semester submits his project proposal to SOCIS, IGNOU, New Delhi. In a month’s time, he will receive communication from SOCIS about its approval. In case it is disapproved, student will be informed about the reason for its disapproval. In case it is approved, the student will be communicated about the same. After the student receives approval letter, he can submit project report to SR&E, IGNOU, New Delhi which will inform the student about the schedule of project viva to the student in due course. Then, the student attends for project viva and waits for the Grade Card from IGNOU which contains the result of his/her Project Work.

Students are required to study this problem and suggest the appropriate mechanism for computerizing the operation. The computerization should be in such a way that IGNOU can attend to the queries of the student