The Rolodex Tool Project

The Rolodex Tool is a very small application program used as an example in Gene Fisher's software engineering classes. The Rolodex Tool project illustrates important software engineering concepts and techniques presented in class. Students can use the Rolodex Tool example for guidance in developing their own class projects.

A larger-scale, more comprehensive course example is the Calendar Tool project. Both the Calendar Tool and Rolodex Tool illustrate the same concepts. The Calendar Tool is a medium-scale information processing application with realistic functionality. The Rolodex Tool is a "toy" application with minimal functionality. The traditional benefit of such toy examples is to present concepts with minimal superfluous detail, to help focus on the concepts. The reader may choose the example that best suits her or his needs.

• requirements -- user-level functional requirements for the project
• specification -- formal specification of the functional requirements
• prototype -- operational prototype, with limited functionality
• design -- architectural software design
• implementation -- implementation in C++
• testing -- complete testing plans and results
• administration -- administrative and managerial information
• documentation -- audience-specification documentation, such as users manual and installation instructions