MIST 2090: Introduction To Information Systems In Business
MIST 4630: Network Application Development
Course Syllabus: Spring Semester 2009
University of Georgia – Terry College of Business
Department of Management Information Systems
CONTACT INFORMATION AND OFFICE HOURS:
Dr. Craig Piercy
Office Hours
Office: Brooks Hall Room 309
Monday: 1:30pm- 3:30pm
E-mail: craig.piercy@gmail.com
Wednesday: 10:00am-12:00pm
Office: 542-3589; Fax: 583-0037
Other times by Appointment
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Web application development using a current development language and platform (Currently – Java –
JSP and Servlets). Concepts include: application development strategies and techniques, web
technology platforms, a web development language and web services. Projects will involve
development of a Web application for an organization that will enable users to query a database on the
organization's server.
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
Upon successful completion, students will be able to demonstrate (through completion of coursework,
assignments and exams):
Knowledge of Basic Web Technologies (HTML, CSS, Client/Server networks)
Knowledge of Object-oriented design.
Knowledge of Java utilities and collections.
Knowledge of JavaServer Pages
Knowledge of Java database connectivity (JDBC).
Knowledge of Java Servlet basics.
Knowledge of Client-Side Programming with JavaScript
Note: MIST 4600 and MIST 4610 are required prerequisites for this course.
REQUIRED TEXTS and OTHER MATERIALS:
Murach’s Java Servlets and JSP (2nd Edition), Andrea Steelman and Joel Murach, Mike
Murach and Associates, 2003 (ISBN: 978-1-890774-44-8).
1. Other Readings: As announced. May be provided as handouts or as downloads from the course
web pages.
2. Access to your own UGA Arches account or other e-mail account (e.g. Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.).
3. Download and install course software. Details will be provided in a separate document.
1
COURSE POLICIES:
1. Academic Honesty. “’A Culture of Honesty’ is the university of Georgia’s policy about academic
honesty. … Every student who enrolls at the University agrees to be bound by the policy. … This
means that each student has a responsibility to read the policy [a copy is located at
http://www.uga.edu/ovpi/honesty/main.html] and comply with it. It’s no defense to a charge of
academic dishonesty to say ‘I didn’t know that was prohibited.’ … Students must perform all of
their academic work without plagiarizing, cheating, lying, tampering, stealing, receiving assistance
from others (unless the faculty member authorizes that assistance) or using sources to assist in that
work (without giving fair attribution). [Source: “A Culture of Honesty at the University of
Georgia.” A pamphlet published by the UGA Office of the Vice President for Instruction].
Important! You are NOT to receive ANY outside assistance on the exams, quizzes, or
computing projects without prior approval from the professor. In fairness to the students who are
ethical, any student found violating the academic honor code will be prosecuted according to the
UGA Academic Honesty procedures. Your assignments must be the result of your individual
effort.
2. Attendance: Students are expected to attend classes and are responsible for obtaining information
from missed classes from other students (this includes changes to due dates). Excessive absences
may result in your being withdrawn from the course at the instructor’s discretion.
3. Classroom Computer Use: During class time, class room computers and personal laptops are for
MIST 4630 course related work only unless otherwise directed by the instructor. The instructor
retains the right to shut down a computer or eject a student from the class room if this policy is not
followed or the student exhibits otherwise disruptive behavior. Multiple warnings may result in an
instructor initiated course withdrawal. This means NO Web surfing, Facebook, email, IM-ing or
other non-class related computer use during the official times for the course.
4. Responsibility for Course Materials: You are responsible for all material covered in class. If you
are absent, you are responsible for obtaining the information you missed. To the maximum extent
possible, class outlines, additional course materials, and announcements will be posted to the class
web site or listserv.
5. Changes to Due Dates: The scheduled due dates for assignments, exams, and project activities are
subject to change, but all changes will be discussed in class and posted to the class web site. It is
your responsibility to ensure that you are aware of any such changes.
6. Individual Assignments for Course: There will be a number of individual exercises for this course
that you should complete. You will be able to find links to these assignments on the course Web
page, so you should check there frequently for updates.
7. Questions about Homework Assignments: Many of the course assignments will require you to
analyze, design and write computer programs. While we welcome your questions about these
assignments, there are some guidelines to follow. We will try to answer your specific questions
about your computer programs. We will not be willing to do a general preview of a program before
it is submitted. This means that questions like: “Will you please have a look at my program before
I submit it to see if it is correct?” will receive the answer “No.” In addition, you will be required to
2
show evidence that you have analyzed the problem and planned your program before help will be
given. Evidence can include such items as event tables and pseudocode. This will demonstrate to
us that you have spent some time in thinking about the problem before programming. It will also
aid us in understanding what you are trying to do in your program more efficiently.
8. Grade Discussion Policy: It is the student’s responsibility to monitor his or her own grades.
Assignment and test grades will be posted to the course web site. As each component of your grade
is posted for the first time, an announcement may be made in lecture and/or the course listserv.
However it is your responsibility to check the website. IMPORTANT: Notification of intent to
discuss any grade must be received, via e-mail, within one week of the grade postings. Requests for
grade discussion after this time period may not be considered. In the email, provide your contact
information and clearly state the specific item(s) that you would like to discuss.
9. SMIS: It is also expected that you will attend 5 SMIS (http://www.ugasmis.org/) meetings and/or
other MIS professional development events (instructor approval required) during the semester. If
you did not already know, the Society for Management Information Systems (SMIS) is the
representative student organization at the University of Georgia for the MIS program. Its goal is to
build relationships between the MIS students, UGA / MIS alumni, company recruiters and MIS
faculty. You will greatly benefit from attending SMIS meetings, or even better, from becoming an
active member or SMIS officer. This is an MIS department requirement for all MIS majors.
PROGRAMMING ASSIGNMENTS:
This is primarily a programming course. You will be submitting computer programs for the majority of
your assignments. Unless otherwise stated in the specific requirements for an assignment, your
programs should be written with the following general guidelines in mind. Failure to do these can
result in points subtracted from an assignment grade.
Programming Assignment Guidelines:
Documentation – use comments in your code to document your program. All program files
should contain a set of comments that list the title of the program, the last date modified, and
the programmer’s name. In addition, you should use enough comments within your code so that
someone else could read through the code and comments and understand your program logic.
Programs should not be excessively commented.
Robustness – in most cases, your programs should work in the most general sense possible.
Basically, do not hard-code values that should be provided as input by the user or that could be
determined from the dataset used. For example, if you are asked to write a program using a
dataset that currently includes 10 items, you should not use a loop that iterates from 1 to 10.
Instead, you should first determine the number of items programmatically and then iterate up to
the total number of data items. In other words, your loop should work if items are added or
deleted from the list (we will do this when grading to make sure that the program still works).
Program sets – Most assignments will include a set of problems for you to complete. For these
sets - we will typically look to make sure that all programs have been submitted, we may look
inside each of the programs to make sure that all guidelines have been followed, and we will
typically choose one or two programs from each set for more detailed grading (you will not
know beforehand which one we will choose to grade).
Evidence of Planning - good programming requires good planning and problem analysis. To
receive partial credit on non-working programs, you must also show evidence that you have
analyzed the problem and planned an approach. (From experience, it is best for you to do this
3
before beginning to program, rather than try to do it after you have decided that you are lost
with a non-working program.)
Appropriate naming for objects and variables – Be consistent in naming your objects and
variables. All objects used must be assigned a logical name.
Data Validation – Whenever user input is obtained by an application, you should assume that
your program needs to validate that the input is correct and that it properly handles exceptions
based on incorrect user input.
Testing/Debugging – Be sure to thoroughly test your programs with all possible inputs and user
interactions. You should do both positive and negative testing. Positive testing involves testing
the behavior of your code when valid data is entered. Negative testing involves testing the
behavior of your code when invalid data has been entered.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION:
There will be a midterm and a final exam. All students must take exams at the scheduled times except
for emergencies. Also, you will be assigned a number of individual assignments that are designed to
enhance your knowledge of the material. All deliverables are due at the start of class on the due date
unless otherwise specified. A major project will be assigned to develop an interactive, data-based web
site. Your grade on the project will be based on the quality of the three deliverables that you produce.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The homework projects are an individual effort unless otherwise specified by
your instructor. Any evidence of cooperation on them will result in the involved individuals being
referred to the appropriate university authorities.
Evaluation of each student’s grade will be based on each of the following deliverables and weights:
Midterm Exam:
30%
Final Exam:
30%
HW, quizzes and Other
20%
individual exercises:
Professional Development
2%
(SMIS, MIS Events)
Group Project
18%
IMPORTANT NOTE: You must score at least 60% on averaged raw score for the two exams in order
for the group project and homework assignments to count toward your final grade. In other words, the
projects cannot help you pass the course if you have a failing grade on the midterm and final exams.
This policy is meant to ensure that you have done your own work and a significant portion of the
project work in order to obtain substantial individual understanding of the course material.
4
MIST 4630: Network Application Development
Course Schedule: Spring Semester 2009
This schedule is tentative. The instructor reserves the right to make changes as necessary. All changes will be
announced in class. Additional readings may be assigned in addition to those listed here under the Source
column.
Week
Dates Topic
Readings/Assignments
0
Jan. 8
Introduction to Course
Steelman and Murach – Ch. 1
Assignment A – Due: 1/13
1
Jan. 13 –
Client-Side Technology: Structuring a Web
Steelman and Murach – Ch. 4
Jan.15
Page with HTML
ElementK Tutorials
Assignment B – Due: 1/20
2
Jan. 20 –
Client-Side Technology: Using CSS for
ElementK Tutorials
Jan. 22
Style
Assignment C – Due: 1/28
3 Jan.
27
Steelman and Murach – Ch. 3
–
Jan. 29
Introduction to NetBeans
Assignment D – Due: 2/3
4
Feb. 3
Server-Side Technology: Review of Java
Assigned Readings
–
Programming
Feb. 5
Assignment E – Due: 2/10
5 Feb.
10
Server-Side Technology: An Introduction to
Assigned Readings
–
Web Programming
Feb. 12
Server-Side Technology: The Structure of a Assignment F – Due: 2/17
Web Application
6 Feb.
17
Server-Side Technology: Developing JSP
Steelman and Murach – Ch. 5
–
Pages
Feb. 19
Assignment G – Due: 2/24
7 Feb.
24
Server-Side Technology:
Steelman and Murach – Ch. 6
–
Java Servlets
Feb. 26
Assignment H – Due: 3/3
8
Mar. 3
Review for Midterm
–
Mar. 5
Midterm Exam (3/5)
9
Mar. 10
Spring Break (Mar. 9 – 13)
–
Mar. 12
10 Mar.
17
Introduction to Course Project Server-Side
Steelman and Murach – Ch. 7
–
Technology:
Steelman and Murach – Ch. 8
Mar. 19
State Management
Assignment I – Due: 3/24
11 Mar.
24
Server-Side Technology:
Steelman and Murach – Ch. 11
–
Adding Databases to Web Applications
Mar. 26
Project Part 1 Due: 3/26
Assignment J – Due: 3/31
12
Mar. 31 –
Client-side programming with JavaScript
Assigned Tutorials
Apr. 2
Assignment K – Due: 4/7
13
Apr. 7
Client-side programming with JavaScript
Assigned Tutorials
–
Apr. 9
Project Part 1 Due: 4/9
Assignment L – Due: 4/14
14
Apr. 14
Client/Server Technology: Putting it all
Assigned Tutorials
–
together
Apr. 16
Assignment M – Due: 4/21
5
15
Apr. 21
Project Work
–
Apr. 23
16
Apr. 28
Course Review
Project Part 3 Due: 4/28
–
April 30 – no class – Monday class
Apr. 30
schedule in effect.
Final Exam:
(76-612) 11:00A-12:15P - Tue, May 5, 2009 - 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
(46-924) 2:00P-3:15P - Tue, May 5, 2009 - 3:30 pm - 6:30 pm
6
Document Outline
