CSCI 265 Quiz 3 Solution Discussions Fall 2025

Question 1: your team 265 project design

Based on your team's 265 project this semester, provide a data flow diagram showing the top level of decomposition of your system into key processes, data stores, data flows, and the relevant external entities. Be sure all the elements of your DFD are clearly labelled, and provide a brief (single sentence) text description of each element.

Solution discussion

The biggest concerns here are that:
 - the diagram showed
     - a reasonable breakdown of the product into processes/smaller components
     - the entities (users and external systems) who interact with the product as it runs
     - the data stores used
     - clear directional flows of data transferred between each of the above
     - clear/distinct labels on everything above
     - the accompanying short (single sentence) descriptions for each of the above
 - the most common issues encountered were
     - trying to embed aspects of the SDLC or standards, version control processes, etc
       into the product DFD (the DFDs are about the makeup of the actual product: not how the
       goes about building/maintaining it)
     - trying to embed ERD content into the DFD (for the final exam be sure you're clear on
       the different purposes of the different kinds of diagram)
     - not providing enough of a decomposition of the product into processes
     - not providing one or more of the requested elements (entities, data stores, etc)
     - not clearly labeling and describing the parts of the diagram (vague or unlabeled data
       flows in particular)

Question 2: testing of your team 265 project

Based on your current vision for a completed version of your team's 265 project, and assuming your team had the time and resources available to truly and fully finish it:

Describe the biggest technical challenges you would expect to encounter when carrying out full testing before a release to the public, and make recommendations for how you would approach them (again assuming the time and resources were available).

Solution discussion

This one depends a lot on the product itself, and the mark was split more or less equally
between the descriptions of challenges and the associated recommendations.

Some common challenges/recommendations include:

Sheer volume/complexity of tests needed to ensure product meets requirements:
   - use of any support tools/sw (from language, platform, etc)
   - in house software/scripts to augment
   - suggested team processes to mitigate the test load

Testing the UIx elements/aspects:
   - ui test tools, recordings+playback
   - user action scripts, results recorded for future evaluation

Dealing with deliberate randomness (e.g. games):
   - seeded tests (based on whatever seeding mechanism the tool/language/platform provides)

Networking (establishing/maintaining connections, bandwidth, response time, etc):
   - simulated loads
   - simulated connection loss
   - use of netw test tools (depending on the tool/language/platform)