DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

Contents
1 INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT........................................................................ 2
2 LEARNING OUTCOME............................................................................... 2
3 ASSESSMENT AND DELIVERABLES:........................................................... 3
3.1 ASSIGNMENT GRADE BREAKDOWN..................................................................3
3.2 GRADE MARK...........................................................................................4
PERFORMANCE CRITERIA:....................................................................................................... 4
3.2.1

CT024-3-3
DISTRIBUTED COMPUTER
SYSTEMS
(DCOMS)
ASSIGNMENT
APU STUDENT COMMITTEE ELECTION SYSTEM

DISTINCTION (75% AND ABOVE)............................................................................................. 4

3.2.2

MOHAMMAD REZA MORAD HASELI

Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation (APU)

Updated on January 2015

CREDIT (65 74%)............................................................................................................. 4

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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

3.2.3 PASS (50 64%)...................................................................................................... 4

3.2.4 MARGINAL FAIL (40 49%)......................................................................................... 4
3.2.5 FAIL (0 - 39%).......................................................................................................... 5
4 ASSIGNMENT REQUIREMENTS.................................................................. 6
5 BACKGROUND......................................................................................... 7
6 COMMITTEE STRUCTURE.......................................................................... 7
7 THE PROCESS OF ELECTION..................................................................... 8
7.1 NOMINATION PROCESS................................................................................8
7.2 THE PROCESS OF SELECTING THE CANDIDATE.....................................................8
7.3 THE PRE-ELECTION PROCESS.........................................................................8
7.3.1 CANDIDATE ANNOUNCEMENT......................................................................................... 8
7.3.2 MEETING AND DEBATES................................................................................................ 8
7.4 THE ELECTION PROCESS...............................................................................8
8 THE SOFTWARE....................................................................................... 9
8.1 WHAT ARE THE SOFTWARE FUNCTIONALITIES?....................................................9
8.1.1 CANDIDATE REGISTRATION TASK..................................................................................... 9
8.1.2 ELECTION TASK......................................................................................................... 10
9 WHAT IS YOUR TASK?............................................................................ 11

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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

ASIA PACIFIC UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND

INNOVATION
1

Individual Assignment

Assignment Title

: APU student committee election system (100%)

Computer Language

: Java

Date Assigned

: Week 2

Date Due

: Week 15

Submission

: Softcopy & Hardcopy

Lecturer

: Reza

Email ID

: reza@apu.edu.my

Date Due

: Week 15

Presentation week

: Week 16

Presentation duration

: 30 minutes per student

Best Resource

: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/

2 Learning Outcome
1

Assess various distributed technology in the context of distributed enterprise

applications.

Discuss projected future developments in distributed systems technology and standards.

Utilise appropriate language and system facilities to develop distributed and faulttolerant applications.

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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

3 Assessment and Deliverables:

3.1 Assignment grade Breakdown
Following is the grading criteria for the required report:
Area
Program
Programme correctness 40%
Marks breakdown are:
o Functionalities 15%
o Program structure 5%
o 1st Protocol 5%
o 2nd Protocol 5%
o 3rd Protocol 5%
o Transaction management 5%
Readability of the program 10%
Marks breakdown are:
o Inline comments 2%
o Consistent Indentation and Code Grouping 2%
o Consistent Naming Scheme 2%
o File and Folder Organization 2%
o Separation of Code and Data 2%
Reliability of the program 5%
Additional features 5%

Mark
50%

Documentation
Over all document 3%
1st Protocol explanation 2%
2nd Protocol explanation 2%
3rd Protocol explanation 2%
Transaction management explanation 3%
Program User guide 3%
Test cases and result 3%
Referencing 3%
Explanation of using ICE in the project and its alternatives
3%
Compare and contrast different technology in DCOMS 4%
Elaborate Virtualization, cloud and grid computing usage in
DCOM 3%

30%

Presentation
Clarity of explanation 10%
Question and Answer 10%

20%

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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

Note: Produce the hardcopy of the above report and enclose a softcopy of the report together with
the program source code in a secondary storage media.

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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

3.2 Grade Mark

Performance Criteria:
The following guidelines indicate the standard that will be expected for each grade.
3.2.1

Distinction (75% and above)

Demonstrates an excellent understanding of the DCOMS concept, the application must work with the
good implementation of RMI, Socket, Serialization and managing of transaction in the proper way.
The code should be implemented to a high standard of functionality, with appropriate test plan and
result of the test.
Documentation will be of a high standard. The elaboration of Virtualization, cloud and grid
computing usage in DCOMS and the benefit of ICE technology for DCOMS must be in the
documentation. The comparison of new technologies in DCOMS with application limitation clearly
discussed and future enhancement of the application in real word will be a part of documentation.
Referencing and comments in the source code are very clear and followed the standard; readability
of source code follows the W3 standard. The presentation and application demonstration is good and
answers provided for any questions are completed.
3.2.2

Credit (65 74%)

Demonstrates a good understanding of the DCOMS concepts and technology, the presentation and
documentation explains the core of the requirements with accepted level of development, main
protocols are implemented and transaction management is addressed in the code, minimum test case
and result is implemented.
Document referencing and code comment is complete and the code is following standard to achieve
readability. The document has minimum discussion of Virtualization, cloud and grid computing
usage in DCOMS and the benefit of ICE technology for the assignment.
3.2.3

Pass (50 64%)

Demonstrate some understanding of the DCOMS concepts and technologies. The code can be run
with minimum defect and error. There is enough explanation for each part of the developed and used
technologies. Documentation is adequate. The student will be able to discuss his/her implementation
during the presentation and will be able to explain the way in which he/she has attempted the project.
3.2.4

Marginal Fail (40 49%)

Demonstrate poor understanding of the problem.

Presentation and explanations is limited but

sufficient to demonstrate that the student understands the work that has been submitted. The
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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

implementation will not cover major requested protocols and the application is not able to run in a
proper manner.
Documentation is limited or not to an acceptable standard. There is no test case and result of test.
The inappropriate referencing and poor source code comment.
3.2.5

Fail (0 - 39%)

Demonstrate poor understanding of the DCOMS concepts, documentation incomplete and poor
explanation during demonstration. The implementation of protocols or technologies are weak or
incomplete, the application has very minimum functionality and unable to run properly.
Referencing / code comments are very poor or do not have proper referencing / comments. The
communication between components and server is not properly designed and is unable to
communicate to the server.
Note: Zero mark will be awarded for single protocol implementation or insufficient explanations to
demonstrate that the student understands the work that has been submitted.

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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

4 Assignment Requirements
1. You are required to work individually.
2. The report has to be well presented and should be typed. Submission of reports that are
unprofessional in its outlook (dirty, disorganised, inconsistent, varying coloured paper and
size) will not fare well when marks are allocated.
3. Ensure that the report is printed on a standard A4 (210 X 297 mm) sized paper. Paper weight
of 80 grams and above is highly recommended.

1 inch

illustrated here:

1 inch

1 inch

4. The report should have a one (1) margin all around the page as

1 inch

1 inch

1 inch

The Typed Text

1 inch

1 inch

5. Every report must have a front cover. A transparent plastic sheet can be placed in front of the
report to protect the front cover. The front cover should have the following details:
a) Student name.
b) Intake code.
c) Subject.
d) Project Title.
e) Date Assigned (the date the report was handed out).
f) Date Completed (the date the report is due to be handed in).
6. Plagiarism is a serious offence and will automatically be awarded zero (0) marks.
7. All information, figures and diagrams obtained from external sources must be referenced
using the Harvard referencing system accordingly.
*IMPORTANT NOTES*

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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

1- You have to hand in your hardcopy assignment on time with the Course Work Submission and
Feedback Form.
2- Please be inform that presentation is compulsory and any student refusing to attend the presentation,
the mark will be zero (0) and she/he will be considered fail

5 Background
There is a committee for APU students that manages students who are interested in participating in
any student related events. This committee is also responsible for all in-campus and off-campus
activities which can be organised by the students.
There are many events that the committee will manage and arrange annually. The biggest one is the
multicultural night which many students and APU staffs are involved. Each year, an election event is
held one week after the multicultural night to select new team members for this committee. Since last
year, paper based election and voting system was used. But this time around, the committee
management plans to run the election using computer systems.

6 Committee Structure
The student event committee consists of the head of the committee and four functional areas:
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Research group
Special interest group
Sports and recreational groups
Art and craft groups

Each functional area has a head of the group and all of them will be elected for one year. The
structure of the committee is as below:

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APU student committee election system

DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

7 The Process of Election

Those who are interested to be part of the committee can nominate themselves for any position. Each
candidate can be nominated for just one (1) position.

7.1 Nomination process:

The nomination announcement will be posted at the APU Webspace and the process will start
at 9:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM.
Each candidate will scan and upload his / her student card to the system. They will then select
the nomination position they wanted to register for.
If the number of candidates in a position exceeds 5 nominees, the nomination will close and
the system will not allow any other person to register for that position.
An email will be sent to the candidate for each position and a copy will be sent to the registrar
personnel.

7.2 The process of selecting the candidate:

The head of student service will meet each candidate (each one has 15 minutes to present their
plan) and will then select 5 candidates for the election process.

7.3 The pre-election process

There are few steps before the election event begins. The following are the steps:

7.3.1

Candidate announcement
Candidate debates and meeting

Candidate announcement
The APU student service will announce the name of candidate one week before the election.

7.3.2

Meeting and debates

Candidates, competing for a position, have to present their plan and debate in front of other
students who have been nominated for the position. Arrangement of this meeting is part of the
current committees task.

7.4 The election process

Student who wants to vote are required to use their student ID to vote. If the student has no
student ID, they are not eligible to vote during the election period.

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APU student committee election system

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DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

On the Election Day, there will be several places where the voters can go and vote for their
candidate.
The election duration is one day starting from 8:30 AM and ends at 6:00 PM. Each student can
vote for all available positions using his/her student ID but cannot vote more than one time for
each individual position.
The result should be out after 6:00 PM once the election process is over.

8 The Software
The software is responsible for:
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Registration of nominees
Control the position of which the nominees are interested in
Control the number of registrations for each position
Update the candidate list after the student service announce the names
Manage the election event:
a. Show the welcome message
b. Ask for the Student ID
c. Validate the Student ID
d. Show the candidates list for each position
e. Ask to vote for the available positions
f. Finish the election process
6- Calculate and publish the result

8.1 What are the software functionalities?

8.1.1

Candidate Registration task

In this part, your application is responsible for the candidate registration, which has the
following steps:

8.1.1.1 Candidate validation

You need to ask for the Student ID of the nominees and check if he or she has tried to register
before.
8.1.1.2 Select the position
The application should show the available position to the candidates and each candidate
might select just for one (1) position that is available.
8.1.1.3 Upload the selection
The nominees will upload his / her selection using RMI method with serialization. A scan of
the candidate picture will be part of the uploaded material using socket programming.

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APU student committee election system

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DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

8.1.1.4 Get the conformation

The candidate will get the result in his/her email via SMTP email and the system will alert
the result using the socket programming method. The confirmation alert is submitted to the
nominees. The registration will be finalised by the system.
8.1.2

Election task
The system is responsible to manage the process of the election during the election period.
This process has several tasks noted as follows:

8.1.2.1 Student validation

The student will come to the counter and login to the system using his/her student account.
8.1.2.2 Election process
The student will select a position where they will see the list of candidates and then will
select one for each position.
8.1.2.3 Upload the vote
After the voter submits his/her vote, the application will upload the result to the server and
will save the votes to a file (each separate position to separate file using serialization
methods).
8.1.2.4 Finalize the election and preparing the result
Once the election period has passed, the server must report the result as a file and send to all
voters and candidates via email.

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DCOMS Assignment

CT024-3.5-3-DCOMS

Level 3

9 What is your task?

You, as a programmer in APU, are required to design and develop the above mentioned application
using Java programming language and technology.
Each individual student must attend to the whole application, and develop both client and server side
application. You need to make sure the proper technology features are addressed during the process
of programming. The communication between client and server must use RMI with serialization
and support multiple threads and Socket programming. The whole transaction process should
follow the Transaction Management methods. Please note you can use SQLite as your database
engine other way of storing data is not acceptable.

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