Software Engineering

Augsburg and the Faculties for Informatics at the Technical University Munich and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich started an elite study course in Software Engineering, lead managed by the University of Augsburg.

This is the first elite course of study in Software Engineering in Germany. Only a small number of students will be affiliated to the program. Post-graduate Students of this course are facing opportunities for their careers in science or industry which are hardly to achieve otherwise.

The education is focused on the following five central topics of modern Software Engineering:

• Software Engineering Methods
• Formal Methods and IT-Security
• Database Systems
• Distributed Systems
• Human Computer Interaction

The courses take place in Augsburg and Munich, with slightly more courses in Augsburg.

Integration of an individual study program:

In arrangement with the Mentor a study program adjusted to the individual abilities and interests of the respective student is integrated in the education.The individual study program leads to the Master thesis and may include a stay abroad, research work or work in a project of an industrial partner. The individual study is planned for the fourth semester.

Practice orientation:

The education in the planned course of studies is layed out in such a way that practice plays an important role. First of all the lectures are accompanied by exercises, which require the practical application of the concepts and techniques. Secondly the curriculum contains a practice project, which will be done by individual students or student teams in cooperating companies. Beyond that specialists from industry are merged directly into the teachings, in particular by guest lectures in the Elite colloqium as well as by the activity as a mentor. In addition direct contact with practice can also be part of the "Individual Study or Research" or an external master thesis.

Courses:

The following courses are regularly offered in the elite program:

1. term:

• Software Engineering: This course offers an introduction to current methods in systematic software development. Starting with the software life-cycle, the course deals with the different phases of software development and the currently relevant software development proesses. The main focus is the Unified Process and the usage of the UML in the different phases of development. Further topcis are testing, design patterns and GUI design.
• Formal Methods: This course introduces the audience to techniques for the development of provably correct software.The course starts with techniques for an exact specification of the desired behavior and continues with a logic which can prove the correspondence between implementation and specification.
• Advanced Database Systems: This course imparts knowledge on the design and operation of database management systems. Starting with the relational data model and its foundation, relational algebra, it continues with modeling and design techniques for databases, query languages, database access from OO-languages like Java and object-oriented databases. Furthermore it deals with transactions, multi-user synchronization, error handling, etc.

After the 1. term

• Compact course Project-Management: Project management is a key success factor for software development projects. Challenges for the project management are increasing productivity, ensuring quality, keeping the project within budget and timeframe. This course introduces the functionsor project management, relevant processes and methods and tools, from risk management to estimation methods.
• Soft-Skills:
  • Team work and conflicts in teams
  • Presentation techniques
  • Legal Aspects
• Seminars

2.Term

• Distributed Systems: This course introduces fundamental concepts and methods for Distributed Systems development. Key topics are communication (Fundamental Intercation Model, Networks, Protocols and Services, Interprocess Communication), Processes, Synchronization and Coordination (Processes and Threads, Synchronization, Coordination) and Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services (SOA, Web Services, REST, Web Service Composition).
• Human-Computer-Interaction: This course introduces new paradigms for the interaction between humans and computers, the necessary theoretical background of modern interaction paradigms, specific methods for identification and interpretation of user input and for the generation and synchronization of system output. Another important topic are guidelines for usability in the design of interactive systems.
• Safety Analysis: This course presents state-of-the-art techniques of safety analysis. Target of these techniques is the analysis of highly security-critical systems and they yield design guidelines to improve safety of these systems. Focus of this course is the increasing importance of software in embedded systems. The lecture starts with traditional safety analysis methods and then moves on to leading-edge techniques which are based on Formal Methods.
• Modelling, Specification and Verification: Distinct aspects of reactive systems are concurrency, communication and non-termination. This course presents current approaches for modeling and specification of reactive systems and introduces refinement and verification techniques for reliable reactive systems.
• Requirements Engineering: Requirememts Engineering is a crucial part of every development project. The gathered requirements are the basis of the development, integration and approval of the new system. This lecture starts with an introduction of the goals, responsibilities and topics of Requirements Engineering. It introduces different kinds or requirements, crucial steps in the process, methods and techniques of requirements gathering and the specification of the requirements. Further topics are structured documentation of requirements, use case and scenario modeling, non-functional requirements, requirements management and system models in Requirements Engineering.
• Testing: Software Testing serves the evaluation and improvement of product quality by identifying problems and deficiencies. The course introduces the fundamentals of software testing, describes its position in the software development process and discusses test methods and tools as well as methods for test management.
• Model-based Software Development: The goal of model-based software development is to describe (as far as possible) software systems through (semi-)formal models and to generate as many artifacts as possible from those models. This lecture gives an overview of the model-based software engineerin, focusing on the following main points: Modeling, meta-modeling, transformation and code generation.
• Context-aware Systems: Context-sensitive systems include knowledge about the context of an action when interacting with the user. Important for such systems are knowledge about the situation (environment, location), knowledge or assumptions abotu the actions and intentions of the user and knowledge about the system environment, like ressources, interaction-modes and -media. This lecture describes the modeling of user and context information, development tools for context-sensitive systems, adaptive services and adaptive interaction.
• Web-Databases: In many cases, databases are accessible to the user via web-based interfaces. Examples are online shopping and web banking. The large number of users and the distribution of the application on different hard- and software systems like web servers, database servers, application servers, etc. led to the development of special software architectures and development paradigms. This lecture presents current programming languages, technologies and architectures for modern web-based information systems.
• Soft-Skills
  • Moderation skills
  • Intercultural communication
  • After the 2. term

• Practice project at industrial partners

3.Term

• Software Engineering for Distributed Systems: Topic of this lecture are software architectures for distributed systems (software architectures and organizations, software architecture design, documentation of software architectures and evaluation of software architectures), semantic technologies (semantic web, ontology languages for the semantic web, description logics, reasoning with OWL and description logic reasoning) and multi-agent systems(intelligent agents, agent architectures, reactive and hybrid agents, approaches for decision finding, interaction in multi-agent systems and negotiation and coordination and cooperation through communication).
• Software Engineering for Embedded Systems: Embedded systems are systems that are designed, integrated and operated in a technical environment for a specific purpose. Examples for fields of application of embedded systems are automobiles, airplanes, home appliances, mobile communication and consumer electronics. This lecture gives an overview on the design, the implementation and the technical environment of embedded systems.
• Practical IT-Security: This course introduces fundamental concepts, techniques, methods and applications for IT security. Among other topics, the lecture covers threats and attacks on IT systems, goals of IT security, like integrity, secrecy and availability, cryptography, access control, authentication, network security and security engineering.
• Data-Mining and Data-Warehousing: This course introduces important areas of application for databases in enterprises, e.g. enterprise administration with SAP. Important challengesin this area are availability and reliability of the database management system and the huge amounts of data. Another main focus of the lecture are management and request processing of large data sets in data-warehouses, specialized databases for complex queries.
• Usability Engineering: Because of the increasing pervasiveness of computers in all aspects of life and their embedding in the user's natural environment, the shaping of the human-computer interaction is an increasingly important challenge. This lecture presents design principles and standards, the human information-, activity- and perception-processes, a user-centered development process and methods for the evaluation of interactive systems.

After the 3. term:

• Soft-Skills:
  • Authors workshop
  • Creativity techniques

• Individual study in arrangement with the mentor, e.g.:
  • Stay abroad
  • Integration into the current research
  • Scientific paper
  • Internship
  The individual study leads to the
• Master thesis

Soft Skills Training

The education in the elite program should enable the graduates to adopt leading positions in industry and research. The ability to work in a team, competences as a leader and knowledge in rhetorics are basic requirements for this. The elite program is accompanied by education in those soft skills. Those courses will be held in summer schools.

The following courses are presumably part of the education in the elite program:

• Legal Aspects
• Creativity techniques
• Team work and conflicts in teams
• Presentation techniques
• Rhetorics
• Intercultural communication
• Authors workshop

Application deadline:

The next deadline for applications for the winter term 2010 is March 1st 2010.

Studienbeginn

nur zum Wintersemester