ISQA 8060 - RESEARCH IN MIS

1. Analyze thoroughly the managerial issues for each step in the 11-step (or 8-step, depending upon edition of text) research process.

2. Analyze thoroughly the steps or procedures you would use to critique a research report.

1. Analyze and discuss how each of the following is implemented in OOCOBOL: inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, and information hiding. In your discussion, describe the extensions and changes made to Standard COBOL to enable each of these features.

2. Your client is a new e-commerce firm, mississippi.com that specializes in out-of-print books. In response to the "What happens when the user wishes a list of all available books by Donald Hamilton?" scenario, the initial analysis produced the following message-trace diagram. Describe the additions that must be made and draw a design-level message trace diagram. For each addition, list the alternatives that were possible and explain why you made the choice you did.

• You have been hired in an organization that has been evaluated as CMM Level-1. The firm is adopting the Coad/Yourdon Methodology (OOAD) for future development as part of its attempt to reach CMM Level-3.

  How does the Coad/Yourdon methodology support the organizational move to CMM Level-3? What additional project management practices (methods and procedures) will be needed to ensure achievement of CMM Level-3?

  Be sure to include a table relating each of the Coad/Yourdon processes and deliverables to a specific CMM level. Also indicate which of your additional project management practices (methods and procedures) relate to which CMM level.

1. Assume a corporate TCP/IP network that connects offices in various cities. Using a layered architecture as a framework for your answer,
   1. Describe the generic networking problems addressed within each layer,
   2. Compare and contrast technical solutions using as illustration technologies and standards in use today.

2. While internetworking (lower case 'i') is quite common today, the problems that must be solved for successful internetworking are non-trivial. Define internetworking, discuss what the challenges are and suggest techniques by which they may be solved. Finally, explain how these challenges are met in a TCP/IP Internetworking (capital 'I') solution.

1. One of the objectives of middleware is to provide to the user/application the illusion of a single system, rather than of a collection of (distributed) heterogeneous systems. This idea is also called transparency. Discuss the problems to be solved in creating this illusion, providing in your answer examples of specific techniques used in middleware today to accomplish it.

2. One of the ways in which computing systems have evolved over time has been represented using the concept of 'tiers'. Discuss the motivation for the evolution from fewer to greater numbers of tiers. Also discuss the challenges that arise as the number of tiers grow, and the technologies that offer solutions. What do you feel is the current trend, towards greater numbers of tiers, or fewer? Why? (There is plenty of material here to discuss; a short, minimalist answer (1-2 pages) is not acceptable.)

1. You are in charge of designing a database to store data related to the collection of Compact Disks (CDs) owned by a local music store. The collection consists of a substantial number of CDs, each of which has a title, year, one or more music categories (e.g. Jazz, Blues, Classical, Country, Funk, etc.), and is issued by some recording label (a company, e.g. Columbia, Warner, Blue Note). The store wishes to track the address, telephone number, and web site for each recording label. Each CD has an identification code issued by the recording label which is guaranteed to be unique throughout the industry. A CD is associated with a single artist, under whose name the CD is usually filed on the store's shelves. There are, however, two kinds of artists. One kind of artist is an individual person (e.g. Faith Hill, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Elton John). The other kind of artist is a group. While the individual person is identified by a first and last name and gender, the group is identified by a group name. Moreover, an individual can also be a member of a group. Each individual may be a member of more than one group (or none) and, by definition, a group consists of more than one individual.
   Each CD consists of several tracks, each identified by a track number indicating its relative position on that CD (e.g. track 1, track 2, track 3, etc.). Each track has its own title and duration. Each track represents a single recording. A recording can appear on more than one CD, since a particularly popular recording might appear as track 4 of an original CD, and then as track 1 of a later, "Best of…" CD by the same artist. If the date of the recording is known, that should be stored in the database. For each recording, the music store wishes to store data about which individuals participated in that recording, and what role they played (e.g. lead vocals, vocals, drums, tenor saxophone, etc.) Clearly, an individual can participate in several different recordings, possibly playing a different role each time.
   The music store also would like to keep track of how many copies of each CD it has, reflected in a Quantity on Hand value, and a Reorder Level, which indicates a level to which the quantity on hand can drop before triggering an order for more music.
   1. Draw an entity-relationship diagram for this scenario. You may make any assumptions you need to that don't contradict the facts presented.
   2. Transform the ERD into a relational schema. If necessary, normalize the tables through BCNF.
   3. Develop SQL statements on the basis of your relational schema to answer the following questions.
      1. List all of the artists who have issued a Jazz CD.
      2. How many CDs are there in each category?
      3. List all of the CDs which contain the same recording as the one that appears on Track 1 of Wynton Marsalis' jazz CD, Uptown Ruler. The title of that track is "Psalm 26."

2. How can a DBMS preserve the ACID properties of transactions? Define each property, and discuss the mechanisms a DBMS might use to preserve them.