Browsing by Author "TOPALLI, Damla"
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Item A DATABASE DESIGN METHODOLOGY FOR COMPLEX SYSTEMS(2013-07-14) TOPALLI, Damla; ÇAĞILTAY, NergizThe quality of the software is directly related to addressing the users' needs and their level of satisfaction. To reflect user requirements to the software processes, correct design of the database model provides a critical stage during software development. Database design is a fundamental tool for modeling all the requirements related to users' data. The possible faulty conditions in database design have adverse effects on all of the software development processes. The possible faulty conditions can also cause continuous changes in the software and the desired functionality of the targeted system which may result in user dissatisfaction. In this context, reflecting the user requirements accurately in the database model and understanding of the database model correctly by every stakeholder involved in the software development process is the factor that directly affects the success of the software systems. In this study, a two-stage conceptual data modeling approach is proposed to reduce the level of complexity, to improve the understandability of database models and to improve the quality of the software. This study first describes the proposed two-stage conceptual data modeling. Then the proposed method’s impact on software engineers’ comprehension is also investigated and the results are examined. Results of this study show that, the proposed two-stage conceptual modeling approach improves the understanding level of software engineers and eliminates possible defects in this stage.Item EVALUATING THE QUALITY ASPECTS OF SQL AND NOSQL DATABASES(2022-06-22) ABBAS, Abdulbaset; TOPALLI, DamlaWith the recent advances in technology and the growth of the data to be processed, choosing the suitable databases for your software has become a highly effective element that reflects directly on the overall quality and outcomes of any work. The most popular DBMS are either relational database management systems like SQL or non-relational database management systems like NoSQL; choosing between them at the early stages is essential. In this thesis, the key features of SQL and NoSQL databases have been discussed, considering the eight main software quality attributes affecting the database quality: Availability, Efficiency, Consistency, Durability, Maintainability, Reliability, Scalability, and Recovery Time. This study aims to understand the most effective quality attributes for SQL and NoSQL database implementation. Additionally, the popular DBMS tools for SQL and NoSQL implementation are discussed, considering four tools: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis. To better understand the current implementation preferences, a questionnaire has been conducted with IT professionals: developers, database experts, testers, and managers to understand their preferences on SQL and NoSQL databases from the quality perspective. According to the questionnaire results, the highest important quality attributes for SQL are durability, consistency, and availability whereas, scalability, durability, and efficiency were the most critical quality attributes for NoSQL.Item IMPLEMENTATION OF TOPIC STUDY ACTIVITIES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION(2015-06-02) TOPALLI, Damla; ÇAĞILTAY, NergizRecent studies have shown that, there is a need to propose new approaches and educational methods in order to address current problems of engineering education programs. This study summarized the implementation of a real life term project and Topic Study concepts in an engineering education course. The curriculum of this course is organized to provide skills on making presentation, research and applying knowledge to solve real-life problems, preparing reports and making discussions on a specific topic. This study describes as a case study how these problems are addressed in an engineering education course namely Data Warehousing and Data Mining. It is aimed to improve students’ motivation and interest to the course as well as to improve their active participation in the course. By this approach it is aimed to help them to construct their own knowledge. This paper also presents the structure of the course and evaluation of grades with the results of a survey on students’ opinion about the real-life term project and Topic Study approaches in this course.Item Improving programming skills in engineering education through problem-based game projects with Scratch(Computers & Education, 2018-08-04) TOPALLI, Damla; ÇAĞILTAY, NergizNowadays, programming skills are receiving widespread attention for different age groups alongside occupational education programs to better prepare individuals for their future careers. However, introducing programming concepts in an appropriate manner is a challenge in higher education. The main assumption of this study is that enhancing the classical introduction to programming courses through real-life problem-based game development with Scratch pro gramming environment potentially improves the learners' programming skills and motivation. Accordingly, in this study, during one academic semester period, the Introduction to Programming course for engineering students is enriched up to a certain level through real-life game development projects with Scratch. The students are followed within a four-year period starting from freshman until their graduation. The progress of the students who have taken the Introduction to Programming course in enriched or classical form in the fourth year Senior project course are evaluated. The results show that by slightly improving the course curriculum through real-life game development projects in the Scratch environment, students’ performance on the graduation projects improved significantly. As a conclusion, game-based learning, pro blem-based learning, visual programming and projects are technologies that can potentially help learners to perform better in the introduction to programming course, in turn affecting their performances in projects.Item Performing and analyzing non-formal inspections of entity relationship diagram (ERD)(The Journal of Systems and Software, 2013-04-25) ÇAĞILTAY, Nergiz; TOKDEMİR, Gül; KILIÇ, Özkan; TOPALLI, DamlaDesigning and understanding of diagrammatic representations is a critical issue for the success of soft ware projects because diagrams in this field provide a collection of related information with various perceptual signs and they help software engineers to understand operational systems at different levels of information system development process. Entity relationship diagram (ERD) is one of the main dia grammatic representations of a conceptual data modelthat reflects users’ data requirements in a database system. In today’s business environment, the business model is in a constant change which creates highly dynamic data requirements which also requires additional processes like modifications of ERD. However, in the literature there are not many measures to better understand the behaviors of software engineers during designing and understanding these representations. Hence, the main motivation of this study is to develop measures to better understand performance of software engineers during their understanding process of ERD. Accordingly, this study proposes two measures for ERD defect detection process. The defect detection difficulty level (DF) measures how difficult a defect to be detected according to the other defects for a group of software engineers. Defect detection performance (PP) measure is also proposed to understand the performance of a software engineer during the defect detection process. The results of this study are validated through the eye tracker data collected during the defect detection process of participants. Additionally, a relationship between the defect detection performance (PP) of a software engineer and his/her search patterns within an ERD is analyzed. Second experiment with five participants is also conducted to show the correlation between the proposed metric results and eye tracker data. The results of experiment-2 also found to be similar for DF and PP values. The results of this study are expected to provide insights to the researchers, software companies, and to the educators to improve ERD reasoning process. Through these measures several design guidelines can be developed for better graphical representations and modeling of the information which would improve quality of these dia grams. Moreover, some reviewing instructions can be developed for the software engineers to improve their reviewing process in ERD. These guidelines in turn will provide some tools for the educators to improve design and review skills of future software engineers.