Fundamentals of Operating Systems and Java Programming

Assessment - Java Programming case studies

Purpose of the assessment - Main objectives of this assignment is to enable student to analyse the case study, gather Information required for class design and provide implementation as specified. After successful completion of this assignment, students should be able to:

a. Analyse a case study related to programming.
b. Selection of attributes, corresponding datatypes and associated methods of Java classes
c. Simple implementations

Assignment Specification

Business case study: Volbank organization

[Reference: Bennett et.al,Schaum's Outline of UML, McGraw-Hill, 2001]

BACKGROUND:

Volbank is a not-for-profit organization that matches volunteers with people and groups in need of help. Its overall aims are to promote citizenship and a sense of community by involving people in voluntary activities in their local area. It does this by maintaining a list of voluntary opportunities and a list of volunteers and seeking to match volunteers to right opportunities. Part of Volbank's philosophy is that everyone has skills to offer and needs to be met. Because of this, it encourages volunteers to register their own needs and the recipients of help to offer their own skills. For example, Pete Duffield volunteered to help with painting and decorating. He was matched up with a local after school centre for the under-tens whose centre needs repainting. The children offered their time to put on a show for a local old people's home. Mrs Hernandez, offered her time to give someone a chance to practice Spanish conversation. Pete Duffield took her up on the offer so that he could brush up his Spanish before his holiday in Mexico.

The name Volbank comes from the idea that people can deposit the time that they are prepared to give, as well as a list of the skills that they are willing to offer. Information about Volbank is available through a number of sources including local radio, television advertising and the Internet. Volbank has been setup in partnership with local voluntary organizations that put forward voluntary work that needs doing. They also act as local contact points for volunteers to put themselves forward.

Volunteers can register the skills they are offering with Volbank, by telephone to a volunteer organizer, in person through a local voluntary organization or by filling out their details on a web page. Once they are registered they can deposit time with Volbank by the same means. If the volunteer registers through a local voluntary organization, then the information is passed on it writing Volbank, where it will be recorded by a voluntary organizer in the same way as if the volunteer had contacted Volbank directly by telephone.

Voluntary organizations and individuals (including volunteers) can register their needs for help by contacting a voluntary organizer. This volunteer organizer then tries to match up the people offering their time with the opportunities. This can happen in two different ways: a new volunteer can be matched against opportunities, or a new opportunity can be matched against a pool of volunteers. Matching is done on a geographical basis, using zip or postal codes, and by matching skills to needs.

Once volunteers have been matched to an opportunity, they are notified of the details, and, if they are interested, their details are passed on by the volunteer organizer to the voluntary organization or individuals that requested the help. It is made clear to volunteers that this does not mean that they will automatically be accepted. For some kinds of work, such as work with children, there may be further vetting procedures or even police and social services checks. These are the responsibility of the organization requesting the help.

Volbank is in the process of setting up a computer system to handle all the business of registering and matching volunteers and opportunities, and notifying the participants.

VOLBANK COMPUTER SUPPORT

Volbank needs a computer system to handle the matching of volunteers with opportunities and opportunities with volunteers. This computer system will need a link to the Volbank web-server. Member organizations will be notified whenever a match is made between an opportunity that they have registered and a volunteer. This will be done by fax or email. Volunteers will be notified when a match has been made by letter.

VOLBANK REQUIREMENTS

The requirements listed here are for the system to handle registration, carry out the matching and notify participants. The web server is a separate system.

1. To develop a system that will handle the registration of volunteers and the depositing of their time.
I. To record the details of volunteers, including the skills and the address of each one.
II. To record the time that each volunteer deposits in the system.
III. To transfer from the web-server details of volunteers and the time they are depositing.

2. To handle the recording of opportunities for voluntary activity.
I. To record details of member volunteer organizations.
II. To record the needs of voluntary organizations for help.
III. To record the needs of individuals (including volunteers) for help.

3. To match up donors and recipients of voluntary activity and record the results.
I. To match a volunteer with suitable voluntary activities in his or her area.
II. To match a voluntary activity with suitable volunteers in the same area.
III. To record every match between volunteer and activity.
IV. To notify volunteers of matches
V. To notify volunteer organizations of matches
VI. To record the success of each match and to produce a volunteering agreement for each successful match.

4. To produce statistical analyses of the number of volunteers and opportunities and the amount of time deposited.

Your report should provide detailed answers for the following questions.

Q1.
a) List the actors and use cases that you think are involved in the system.
b) Which actors have an association with which use cases?
c) Which are the priority use cases for elaboration?
d) Provide the UML diagram.

Q2. Determine the classes that are required for the design (minimum of four classes). All classes need to be given a meaningful name.

Q3. Assign attributes/fields for the classes specifying the datatype, the possible range of values (meaningful names should be given).

Q4. Provide the class declaration for three of the classes and a simple implementation of initialization of datatypes of the classes. And provide a display() method that outputs the datatypes to the console.