Computer Sciences Commons^™

Expanding The Database Curriculum, Meg Murray, Mario Guimaraes

Faculty Articles

As database concepts and technologies continue to evolve there exists a need to expand the topics included in database curricula. This is challenging given the restraints on the number of courses that can be included in a typical CS or IS program. While a set of commonly identified core concepts and principles exists, there is little consensus on what supplemental materials should be included in database courses. Through an NSF proof-of-concept grant, we designed and developed courseware incorporating the use of animations to deepen and enrich standard presentations of core database concepts and to complement database teachings as found in …

Learner-Centered Assignments In Computer Literacy, Martha E. Myers, Meg C. Murray, Mario Guimaraes, Debra B. Geist

Faculty Articles

Literacy is a concept that is understood to be the identifier of an educated populace. In today's world, literacy includes computer literacy, as well as language and quantitative literacy. This paper describes exercises developed to improve first year students' computer literacy through more learner-centered engagement. Exercises are designed to support learner-centered goals of independent and responsible learners, appropriate breadth and depth of content, teacher as facilitator, and assessment woven into learning. Exercise topics include purchase of a personal computer, basic logic via spreadsheets, an annotated bibliography built with electronic resources, and an integrated assignment customized by and for each student.

Metadata Basics: A Literature Survey And Subject Analysis, Nicole Mitchell

The Southeastern Librarian

Librarians today are wrestling with an everchanging digital environment. In some way oranother, we must all adapt to new technologies, skills, and ways of thinking. What comes to mind when you hear the word “metadata?” Is itintimidating? Do metadatists and catalogers explain the term adequately? While this articleby no means captures all there is about metadata, it is intended to provide librarians with a basic understanding of what is involved in metadatawork.

The Future Leading Mobility Protocol: Mobile Ipv4 Or Mobile Ipv6?, Victor A. Clincy, Mudiraj Padmaja

Faculty Articles

Mobile computing has become an important area of computer networking and is expected to play a fundamental role in the ubiquitous access of Internet resources in the future. In recent years, we have seen increasing demand from end-users to access network resources from anywhere and at anytime from all kinds of devices. A greater degree of connectivity is almost becoming mandatory in todays business world. In addition, mobility of end-users is placing further requirements on network systems and protocols to provide uninterrupted services. Mobile network protocol such as Mobile IPv4 has emerged as one of the promising solutions capable of …

A Framework For Developing Wireless Mobile Online Applications, Chong-Wei Xu

Faculty Articles

Online applications based on the HTTP protocol are shifting from wired networks, known as Web applications and Web services, to wireless networks, known as wireless mobile online applications, due to the rapid growth of mobile devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants and cell phones. Among the enabling technologies, J2ME is the dominant and the most potential one for building up these wireless mobile online applications. This paper presents a framework that makes the modeling, implementation, and maintenance of wireless mobile online applications intuitive and easy, especially for students and beginners.

Realizing The Open-Closed Principle, Chong-Wei Xu, Jose Hughes

Faculty Articles

The first principle in developing large software systems is the open-closed principle (OCP). This principle seems asking for two conflict goals. How to realize the principle in the real software practice? What are the enabling technologies that can be used to implement the principle? This paper uses a case study to demonstrate the importance of the principle, the design methodology for realizing the principle, and its enabling technologies.

Evaluation And Illustration Of A Free Software (Fs) Tool For Wireless Network Monitoring And Security, Victor A. Clincy, Krithi Sitaram Ajay

Faculty Articles

Wireless communication provides users many benefits such as portability, flexibility, reduced hardware need and lower installation costs. Wireless local area networks (WLANs) for example allow users the ability to carry their laptops from place to place without any physical wires and without losing network connectivity.However, some amount of security risk is always associated with wireless networks. The most significant security risk for wireless technology is the potential outsiders have in gaining access to the communications medium, the communications medium being the air waves. Though WLANs provide the users with the option of roaming, this convenience is facilitated by broadcasting packets …

Free Tools For Teaching & Researching Wireless Networking Concepts, Victor A. Clincy, Krithi Sitaram Ajay

Faculty Articles

As wireless networking and security become more prevalent in the market, more and more computer science programs are incorporating courses in wireless networks or at the least, devoting a significant percentage of the advanced networking courses to wireless topics. As a result, in addition to industry practitioners, there is a growing interest among university researchers and faculty regarding tools used for teaching and researching in wireless networking concepts.This tutorial will demonstrate two free tools, Network Stumbler and ITGuru's wireless module (academic version is free).

Journey To The Center Of The Core: Computers And The Internet In The Core Curriculum, Jorge Pérez, Meg C. Murray

Faculty Articles

Computers, digitalization and the Internet have transformed modern society. Commerce, education, communication and socialization will never be the same. Surprisingly, many universities do not require a computing course in the core curriculum. Critical information technology (IT) competencies are often taken for granted, to the detriment of students who lack computing and Internet skills. This paper describes an initiative undertaken by a computer science and information systems department to assess and remediate IT skills needed by all university students, regardless of major. The project is evolving along several dimensions: identification of discipline-independent IT competencies, assessment of IT skills among current and …

J2me Programming, Chong-Wei Xu

Faculty Articles

Handheld devices, such as programmable cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), have already become more numerous than PCs. Students need to be prepared today to work on the most widely available computing platforms of tomorrow. With their small size and mobility, these handheld devices present both new opportunities and unique software engineering challenges. J2ME stands for Java 2 Micro Edition that is one of the three Java Editions (J2SE, J2EE, and J2ME) specially designed for handheld devices. J2ME plus handheld devices are the platforms for wireless Internet and mobile business in the future.

Studying The Performance Of A Firewall In Network Courses, José M. Garrido

Faculty Articles

This paper presents a simple simulation model of a firewall to derive several performance metrics and briefly argues on the importance and value of modeling and simulation in courses that study various aspects of perimeter defense in network security.

The simulation model mentioned previously is part of an effort by faculty of our department to develop a multi-disciplinary repository of computational models that includes object-oriented discrete-event simulation models. One of the goals of this repository is to build resources that help educate students of computer science, software engineering, and information technology, in modeling and information security.

This and other network …

Using An Easy-To-Use And Free Tool In Teaching And Researching Networks And Security Issues, Victor A. Clincy

Faculty Articles

ITGuru is a powerful simulation environment developed by OpNET Corporation. ITGuru is unique because of its ability to model the entire networking domain, including its routers, switches, protocols, servers, and the individual applications they support. ITGuru improves network researchers' and instructors' ability to identify and solve problems throughout the network. The OpNET Corporation provides a FREE academic copy of their simulation environment to universities for both teaching and research.

Personality And Programming, Amy B. Woszczynski, Tracy C. Guthrie, Sherri Shade

Faculty Articles

Information systems students continue to struggle to successfully complete computer programming classes. Learning how to program is difficult, and failure and attrition rates in college level programming classes remain at an unacceptably high rate. Since many IS students take a programming course as part of their program of study, IS educators should better understand why IS students tend to achieve low success rates in programming courses and what can be done to improve success rates. Little research to date has addressed potential reasons for student failure in programming principles courses. Many educators simply assume that high failure rates are acceptable …

A Taxonomy Of Free Network Sniffers For Teaching And Research, Victor A. Clincy, Halaweh Abu Nael

Faculty Articles

Today's networking environment has become very complex. Networks have been growing in size rapidly and have come to support more complex applications. As result, troubleshooting and maintaining networks has become cumbersome and has created the need for new specialized tools such as Network Protocol Analyzers, better known as "Network Sniffers".Network Sniffers have become critical tools in today's networking management and troubleshooting processes. They enable network managers to evaluate and examine the data running through their network by troubleshooting network performance problems and identifying certain network faults. Network Sniffers can help identify network attacks and detect security threats; they can be …

Itguru - A Powerful Network Simulation Environment For Teaching And Research, Victor A. Clincy

Faculty Articles

ITGuru is a powerful simulation environment developed by OpNET Corporation. ITGuru is unique because of its ability to model the entire network, including its routers, switches, protocols, servers, and the individual applications they support. ITGuru improves network designers and instructors the ability to identify and solve problems throughout their network. ITGuru assesses application impact, automates diagnostic testing, expedites server capacity planning and consolidation, analyzes failure impact, and enables network growth planning

Move To Component Based Architectures: Introducing Microsoft's .Net Platform Into The College Classroom, Meg C. Murray

Faculty Articles

A transformation has been occurring in the architectural model for computer-based application intense software systems. This new model, software-as-a-service, will have a profound impact on the design and development of software for many years to come and as such college level computing curriculums will need to incorporate the concepts and methodologies associated with this new architecture. The platform is built upon a view of interrelated, distributed peer-level software modules and components that work in tandem to achieve specified functional goals. From Microsoft's viewpoint, migration to the new platform requires a radical shift in the software development lifecycle. It is becoming …

Software Development Productivity And Cycle Time Reduction, Victor A. Clincy

Faculty Articles

Increasing software developers' productivity and reducing the software development process' cycle time are key goals for organizations responsible for building software applications. This paper proposes four major areas impacting an organization's ability to increase developer productivity and reduce development cycle time. The four areas are (1) organizational structure and climate, (2) reward system, (3) software development process and (4) the use of software design and testing tools.

An Is Capstone Project: The Mywick Property Management System, Martha Myers

Faculty Articles

This paper describes a project suitable for use in an upper division course requiring the completion of analysis, design and implementation of a software system. It is especially useful for illustrating multiple cycles through the development process, as well as for integrating key concepts from a number of fundamental knowledge clusters in a typical undergraduate IS program of study. These knowledge clusters include database management, project management, programming principles, and system analysis and design. In the pilot class, students employed use case analysis as well as standard object-oriented techniques such as class diagrams and sequence diagrams. Students followed a modified …

Enemy At The Gate: Threats To Information Security, Michael E. Whitman

Faculty Articles

A firm can build more effective security strategies by identifying and ranking the severity of potential threats to its IS efforts.

Considerations For An Effective Telecommunications-Use Policy, Michael E. Whitman, Anthony M. Townsend, Robert J. Aalberts

Faculty Articles

Recent changes in federal telecommunications legislation have underscored the importance of an up-to-date and effective telecommunications-use policy in business organizations. With the proliferation of the Internet, intranets, and email as commonplace business tools, the potential for misuse and subsequent liability has become an increasing concern. Even though the recent Supreme Court decision struck down the obscenity provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), it left intact legislation that effectively mandates development of a sound telecommunications-use policy. In addition to potential liability for systems misuse, organizations have also had to address issues of individual employee privacy within the new systems.

This …

Building Web Sites That Attract Visitors, C. David Shepherd, Daniel Fell

Faculty Articles

The article discusses the use of web sites for health care service marketing. The potential benefits of Internet services for users and care providers are mentioned, but challenges in implementation are also listed. A three generation model of web site design is offered, distinguishing various levels of interactivity, customization, and perceived value. Suggestions are offered applying this model to health care service web sites and their marketing potential.