Product Description

Designed to assist students and professors in software engineering courses and degree programs, Schaum's Outlinne of Software Engineering presents the theory and techniques of software engineering as a series of steps that students can apply to complete any software project successfully. An ideal supplement to all leading textbooks, it provides more than 200 detailed problems with step-by-step solutions, clear, concise explanations of all relevant concepts and applications, and complete coverage of the material taught in the course.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #327729 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Back Cover
SCHAUM'S OUTLINES

OVER 30 MILLION SOLD

Master the fundamentals of software engineering with Schaum's­­the high-performance study guide. It will help you cut study time, hone problem-solving skills, and achieve your personal best on exams and projects!

Students love Schaum's Outlines because they produce results. Each year, hundreds of thousands of students improve their test scores and final grades with these indispensable study guides.

Get the edge on your classmates. Use Schaum's!

If you don't have a lot of time but want to excel in class, this book helps you:

• Use detailed examples to solve problems
• Brush up before tests
• Find answers fast
• Study quickly and more effectively
• Get the big picture without poring over lengthy textbooks

Schaum's Outlines give you the information your teachers expect you to know in a handy and succinct format--without overwhelming you with unnecessary jargon. You get a complete overview of the subject. Plus, you get plenty of practice exercises to test your skill. Compatible with any classroom text, Schaum's let you study at your own pace and remind you of all the important facts you need to remember--fast! And Schaum's are so complete, they're perfect for preparing for graduate or professional exams.

Inside, you will find:

• Overview of software development in computer systems
• Concise explanations of techniques and theories
• Detailed supplement to current textbooks
• Solved problems in real-world applications

If you want top grades and a thorough understanding of software engineering, this powerful study tool is the best tutor you can have!

About the Author
McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

Customer Reviews

Remember: it's an OUTLINE!!!
I purchased this as a required book for a graduate course I took (CS 5704 at Virginia Tech). It is an excellent roadmap for a broad scope of software engineering topics. But you should expect to treat it as a directory of topics from which you must branch out for more in-depth treatment and experience of the topics.

The book is generally well written. Is is very readable and clear, though I do have some complaints. Many topics presuppose other knowledge referenced nowhere else in the book. For example, Chapter 5 on Software Metrics includes a short section on Statistics, which refer to Spearman correlations and Pearson correlations, with no clue as to what they are.

One area in particular, Software Project Management, is 16 pages in its entirety. I have been a software development manager since 1988 and it is almost criminal to lead anyone to believe that what they need to know about this topic in 16 pages. The material there is quite good, and I learned something new myself, but the brevity could be quite misleading to a naive student.

Many chapters in this book are deserving of having one (or more) college courses dedicated to the subject. Software Design alone, a single chapter here, takes years to master the concepts described.

However, this book is marketed as an outline, and a very good outline it is.

Concise, yet thorough descriptions of software engineering
Learning a subject from a Schaum's outline is generally a difficult endeavor. With the emphasis on solved problems and very little explanatory text, there is not a great deal of depth to the coverage. I have used many of them over the years as a source of problems. Sometimes these problems were a supplement to self-study using other more detailed works and other times I have used them as inspiration for classroom examples and test questions.
I used this outline as a source of ideas for topics to cover in my software engineering class in the Spring semester of 2004. What I found most helpful about the problems is that they are concise. By examining a solved problem, I can see at a glance what the problem needs to cover and possible ways to organize the presentation. I did not take problems directly from the book, if the topic is to be covered as an example in class, then it is necessary to include more explanation. For example, I spent some time on Metrics for Object-Oriented Design (MOOD) in the class and the section in this book was very helpful. However, understanding the elements of MOOD requires detailed knowledge of object-oriented concepts such as encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism.
While necessarily brief, the coverage in the book is thorough. Nearly all of the areas considered core to the study of software engineering are mentioned. With plenty of charts and graphs to illustrate them, this book is a solid, albeit limited educational tool.

Superb outline hits the main points of software engineering
This Schaum's outline does a great job of outlining the vast majority of topics you must study in order to call yourself a software engineer versus a programmer. As other reviewers have pointed out, it is not a comprehensive textbook on the subject but makes a great "big picture" supplement. This is particularly valuable to students since college software engineering classes are often poorly structured and taught. When I took software engineering at Virginia Tech the professor actually believed that learning software engineering involved memorizing every UNIX command and all of its options. Thus guidance in this discipline is at a premium.

This book's format is to mention all of the major subtopics of software engineering, provide a paragraph or two in description, and then provide some examples as well as exercises for the student. No particular programming language is used since this is not a book about programming, rather it is about the tools and metrics used to organize, manage, measure, and test programming projects. Everything from project management to metrics to object-oriented design techniques is at least mentioned.

Although there is no formal bibliography given, throughout the book there are references to the work of authors and experts in the field who have written more extensive works on particular aspects of software engineering such as Glenford Myers who authored the classic "The Art of Software Testing", Watts Humphrey author of "Introduction to the Personal Software Process", and Tom DeMarco who penned "Controlling Software Projects". I highly recommend this outline to students of software engineering and also to professionals who might need a quick reference for certain aspects of the field that they may have forgotten.