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George Mason University
2002-03 University Catalog

Information Systems (INFS)

Information and Software Engineering

310 Program Structure and Design for Business Applications (3:3:0). Prerequisite: MIS 201, or CS 103 or 161, or equivalent. Teaches structured programming and design using a high-level language. Focus is on program design, coding, debugging, and documentation. A computing lab is included.

311 Database Management (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 310 or CS 112. Study of the logical and physical characteristics of data and their organization in computer processing. Course emphasizes data as a resource in computer applications, and examines database management system (DBMS) software and its design, implementation, and use. Computing lab is included. Lab exercises use one or more DBMSs for business applications. f,s

312 Computer Architecture and Operating Systems (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 310 or CS 112. Introduction to computing system hardware components, architecture, organization, and operating system software concepts. Course provides basic experience in assembly language programming for modern microprocessors and examines techniques for system evaluation and selection. Computing lab. s

315 High-Level Programming Languages (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 310 or CS 112. Study of the structure and application of high-level languages by stressing the design and implementation of data types, data structures, and algorithms. Computing lab is included. Credit for this course does not count toward the requirements for a major in computer science.

316 Software Systems Engineering (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 310 or CS 211. Study of programming environments, including software tools and control of software development for large information systems engineering projects. Computing lab is included.

462/IT 462: Information Security Principles (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 312 or equivalent. Study of security policies, models, and mechanisms for secrecy, integrity, availability and usage controls. Topics include models and mechanisms for mandatory, discretionary and role-based access controls; authentication technologies; control and prevention of viruses and other rogue programs; common system vulnerabilities and countermeasures; privacy and security policies and risk analysis; intellectual property protection; legal and social issues.

466/IT 466: Network Security (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 312 or equivalent. Symmetric and asymmetric cryptography; encryption, message authentication codes and digital signatures; cryptographic authentication; digital certificates and public key infrastructure; the standards process; cryptographic protocols; SSL, IPSEC and related protocols; secure e-mail; intrusion detection.

498 Independent Study in Information Systems Engineering (1-3:0:0). Prerequisite: 60 credits; must be arranged with an instructor and approved by the department chair before registering. Directed self-study of special topics of current interest in INFS. May be repeated for a maximum of six credits if the topics are substantially different.

499 Special Topics in Information Systems Engineering (3:3:0). Prerequisites: 60 credits and permission of instructor. Topics of special interest to undergraduates. May be repeated for a maximum of six credits if the topics are substantially different.

501 Discrete and Logical Structures for Information Systems (3:3:0). Prerequisites: Six credits of undergraduate mathematics. Study of discrete and logical structures for information systems analysis and design including basic set theory and proof techniques, propositional and predicate logic, trees and graphs, finite state machines, formal languages and their relation to automata, computability and computational complexity, formal semantics-operational, axiomatic and denotational approaches. Credit cannot be applied to any graduate degree in IT&E or the B.S. degree in Computer Science.

515 Computer Organization (3:3:0). Prerequisites: Undergraduate courses or equivalent knowledge in structured programming in a high-level language. Computer hardware organization: arithmetic and logical operations; combinational and sequential logic; machine representation of numbers, characters, and instructions; addressing techniques; microprogramming; reduced instruction set computers. Symbolic assembly language and interrupts and input/ utput organization, are also covered. Credit cannot be applied to any graduate degree in IT&E or the B.S. degree in Computer Science.

590 Program Design and Data Structures (3:3:0). Prerequisite: Undergraduate courses or equivalent knowledge in structured programming in a high-level language. Study of the fundamentals of data structures and algorithms applied in programming solutions to application problems. The coursestresses programming in a modern high-level language. Laboratory required. Credit cannot be applied to any graduate degree in School of Information Technology and Engineering.

601 Operating Systems Theory and Practice (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, and 590; or equivalent. Fundamental concepts including process synchronization and scheduling, interprocess communication, memory management, virtual memory, deadlocks, security and access-control, file and disk management, performance analysis, and distributed systems. The impact of computer architecture on operating systems is examined. Case studies and comparative analysis of operating systems are presented.

612: Principles and Practices of Communication Networks (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, 590 (or equivalent) and the ability to program. This course introduces the principles of computer networks and their applications to the Internet. Details of layering, protocols, performance, resource allocation, management, security and other contemporary issues related to networks are discussed. Examples of the course material are protocols such as HTTP(S), DNS, TCP/IP, RSVP, SNMP, algorithms such as Dijkstra's link state routing, security measures such as firewalls and encryption, principles behind them and analysis of their performance. Lectures are complemented by a programming project and analytical exercises.

614 Database Management (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515 and 590; or equivalent. Introduction to database systems, emphasing the study of database models and languages and the practice of database design and programming. Topics include the Entity-Relationship model, the relational model and its formal query languages, SQL, the theory of relational database design, and object-oriented and logic-based databases. Computing lab is required.

622 Information Systems Analysis and Design (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515 and 590; or equivalent. Integration of computing technologies, systems analysis, system design practices, and management criteria in the design of large-scale information management and decision support systems. Cases and a computing lab are included.

623 Information Retrieval (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, and 590; or equivalent. Study of models and methods for storage and retrieval of unstructured information, such as documents. Topics include information retrieval models, automatic indexing, document clustering, statistical thesauri, search techniques, performance measurement, answer visualization, and search engines for retrieval from the World Wide Web.

640 Introduction to Electronic Commerce (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, and 590; or equivalent. Electronic Commerce in its broadest sense; information technology support; business support (financial, marketing, resource planning, etc.); ethical, cultural, and policy issues; national and international legal issues; telemedicine, medical and industrial applications; evaluation of quality of service.

641 Group Project in Electronic Commerce (3-6:3-6:0). Prerequisite: Completion of INFS 640. Projects in electronic commerce (EC) selected to illustrate special problems and solutions in development, design, and implementation of EC Systems; designed to need multiple skills in economics, information technology, and business involving ethical, cultural policy, and legal issues; groups therefore selected to have multiple skills. Projects selected from public sector, medical, or industrial application.

650 Object Oriented Applications for Information Systems (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515 and 590; or equivalent. Principles and applications of object-oriented methods in information systems. The study of a variety of languages and design methods is used for class construction. Higher-level tools for system construction are considered. Applications are investigated through program construction and case studies in varied settings, such as database systems, graphical user interfaces, knowledge-based systems, simulations, and prototyping. Programming projects are required.

697 Topics in Information Systems (1-6:1-6:0). Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. Special topics in information systems not occurring in the regular INFS sequence are presented. May be repeated for credit when distinct offerings of the course differ in subject.

740 Individual Project in Electronic Commerce (3:3:0). Prerequisite: Completion of INFS 640. Projects in electronic commerce selected to illustrate special problems and solutions in development, design, and implementation of EC Systems; designed to need multiple skills in economics, information technology, and business involving ethical, cultural policy, and legal issues. Projects selected from public sector, medical, or industrial application.

750 Application Frameworks for Windowed Information Systems (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 601 and 650. Studies the use of object-oriented visual application frameworks in building event-driven windowed systems. Topics include windowed systems as event-driven systems; central architecture of windowed systems and the encapsulation of windowed architectures by object-oriented frameworks; and analysis and design of windowed applications. The various features of visual application frameworks will be illustrated using a variety of information systems applications. Programming projects.

755 Data Warehousing and Mining (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 614 or equivalent. The course covers techniques for designing and maintaining large data warehouses. Topics covered are OLAP, star schemas, data integration, data cleaning, maintenance of views in the presence of updates to the sources, and query processing of warehouses. The second part of the course focuses on mining data from the warehouses. Topics include data mining techniques such as classification, clustering, association rules, mining of time-series and complex data. The emphasis is on scalability over large data sets.

760 Advanced Database Management (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 614. Study of advanced database models and languages, database design theory, transaction processing, recovery, concurrency, distributed database, security and integrity. Recent developments and research directions are discussed.

762 Information Systems Security (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 601 or permission of instructor. Study of security policies, models, and mechanisms for secrecy, integrity, and availability. Topics include operating system models and mechanisms for mandatory and discretionary controls, data models, concepts and mechanisms for database security, basic cryptography and its applications, security in computer networks and distributed systems and control and prevention of viruses and other rogue programs.

764 Object-Oriented Database Systems (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 614 or CS 650, or permission of instructor. The knowledge of an object-oriented programming language such as C++ is highly desirable. Study of concepts and systems of object-oriented (OO) databases. Topics include OO design, data models, query languages, new data types, and implementation. Also included are a detailed case study and a project performed on a OO-DBMS. Various prototypes, commercially available systems, and emerging standards are surveyed.

765 Database and Distributed Systems Security (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 614 and 762 or permission of instructor. Science and study of methods of protecting data: Discretionary and mandatory access controls, secure database design, data integrity, secure architectures, secure transaction processing, information flow controls, inference controls, and auditing. Security models for relational and object-oriented databases. Security of databases in a distributed environment. Statistical database security. Survey of commercial systems and research prototypes.

766 Internet Security Protocols (3:3:0). Prerequisites: INFS 612 or equivalent. Study of network and distributed systems security. Review of basic cryptography, and threats and vulnerabilities in distributed systems. Security services: confidentiality, authentication, integrity, access control, nonrepudiation; and their integration in network protocols. Key management, cryptographic protocols and their analysis. Access control, delegation and revocation in distributed systems. Security architectures, multilevel systems, and security management and monitoring.

767 Secure Electronic Commerce (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 762 or 766. Cryptography review, cryptographic protocols, secure electronic transactions, public key certificates and infrastructures, authentication and authorization certificates, secure credential services and role-based authorization, mobile code security, security of agent-based systems, electronic payment systems, intellectual property protection, secure timestamping and notarization.

770 Knowledge Management for E-Business (3:3:0). Prerequisite: INFS 622 or permission of instructor. This course studies knowledge management within the context of large organizations, particularly those that conduct business on the web and over the Internet. Topics include the knowledge management (KM) process model and lifecycle; case studies of effective KM in organizations; e-business frameworks and models, including business-to-consumer, business-to-business, and net marketplaces; the extensible markup language (XML) and its use in e-business transactions and services; the role of standards in effecting inter-enterprise process models and workflows; the intelligent integration and interchange of information among business partners; web service architectures and standards; and security and digital rights management in e-business environments.

790 Information Systems Policy and Administration (3:3:0). Prerequisites: Completion of all core courses, and preferably taken in final semester prior to graduation. Capstone course that integrates the technical and executive policy issues of information systems. Critical executive issues are examined through case studies and a comprehensive individual project.

796 Directed Readings (3:3:0). Prerequisite: Graduate standing in information systems with at least 12 prior credit hours in M.S. Research and analysis of a contemporary problem in information system development. Prior approval is required by a faculty sponsor who supervises the student's work. Written report or thesis proposal is required. A maximum of 6 hours may be earned.

797 Advanced Topics in Information Systems (3:3:0). Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. Special advanced topics not occurring in the regular INFS sequence. May be repeated for credit when distinct offerings of the course differ in subject.

798 Research Project (3:3:0). Prerequisite: 18 hours of credit applicable towards M.S. Research project chosen under the guidance of a full-time graduate faculty member, resulting in a written technical report. Prior approval required by a faculty sponsor who supervises the student's work.

799 Thesis (1-6:0:0). Prerequisite: 18 hours of credit applicable toward M.S. Original or compilary work evaluated by a committee of three faculty members.