UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2012/2013
FIRST YEAR EXAMINATION FOR THE BACHELOR OF SCIENCE
IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BIT 1205 SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
DATE: DECEMBER, 2012 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question ONE and any other TWO
QUESTION ONE
a) Differentiate between the following terms [8 Marks]
i. Information Systems and information Technology
ii. System analysis and system design
iii. Structured walkthrough and Formal technical review
iv. System Cohesion and system coupling
b) A feasibility study is a short focused study aimed at establishing the practicability
of Systems development projects. Describe FOUR feasibility tests that must be
undertaken before the initiation of the project. [8 Marks]
c) Describe FOUR types of servers common in client server architectures. [4 Marks]
d) Explain THREE benefits of designing programs in a modular way. [6 Marks]
e) Explain FOUR system stake-holders for Hotel management system [4 Marks]
QUESTION TWO
a) Explain what you understand by the term normalization, describing the various
levels of normalization. [8 Marks]
b) Use the following narrative to answer the questions that follows
The pharmacy at Mary-hill hospital fills medical prescriptions for all patients and
distributes these medications to the nurse stations responsible for the patient’s
care. Medical prescriptions are written by doctors and sent to the pharmacy. A
pharmacy technician reviews the prescription and sends them to appropriate
pharmacy station. For example for drugs that must be formulated (made on site)
they are sent to the lab station, off-the-shelf drugs to the shelving station est.
At each station the pharmacist reviews the order checks the patients file to
determine if it is appropriate and fills the order. If the order cannot be filled the
prescribing doctor is contacted. In this case the doctor may write another
prescription. Once filled a prescription label is generated, listing the patients’
name, drug type and dosage, expiry date est. and placed on the drug container and
sent to the appropriate nurse station. The patient details and prescription cost are
sent to the billing department.
a) You are required to identify all the External Entities and create a Level O Context
diagram that models the scenario at Mary-Hill Hospital. State any assumptions
made. [6 Marks]
b) Mary-Hill Hospital has proposed the building of a new information system to
support the operations at the firm. Discuss THREE main roles of a system analyst
who is part of a project to develop the Information system [6 Marks]
QUESTION THREE
a) Using a diagram, describe the phases that an Information system has to undergo
[7 Marks]
b) Information systems development activities are usually supported. Such support
includes CASE tools. Describe what CASE is, explaining the various types of
support it provides. [5 Marks]
c) Briefly explain FOUR types of system maintenance and indicate where in the
lifecycle they may occur. [8 Marks]
QUESTION FOUR
The marketing department of an organization requires a process to run against its
customer database.
Customers who have not made a purchase in the past two years will have their
database account status field flagged as dormant. Any remaining customer who
has not made a purchase in the previous 6 months is to be sent a letter offering
them a discount if they make a purchase in the next month.
The discount offered will depend on the value of their last purchase; 10% if the
sale was £500 or more and 5% otherwise. For other customers, no action is
required.
a) What aspect of this process makes the use of a decision table appropriate?
[2 Marks]
b) Draw a decision table for the process. [10 Marks]
c) Write an algorithm for the process using structured English. [8 Marks]
QUESTION FIVE
a) Why is it important to fully document the testing process? [4 Marks]
b) It is the philosophy of some commercial developers of software to release Alpha
and Beta versions of software. What are the advantages to the developer of this
approach? [4 Marks]
c) Software engineers are concerned with the usability of the interfaces they design.
Several interface factors can be assessed.
Comment upon any four of the factors listed below from the end users viewpoint.
i. Learnability
ii. Speed of operation
iii. Robustness
iv. Recoverability
v. Adaptability [8 Marks]
d) Projects for implementation are likely to fail due to either organizational,
individual or management (political) reasons. Explain FOUR possible reasons
that could lead to project failure. [4 Marks]
