Information Systems (INFS)
Information and Software Engineering
310/IT 308 Program Structure and Design for Business Applications (3:3:0) Prerequisite: computer programming course in high school or college. Teaches structured programming and design using high-level language. Focuses on program design, coding, debugging, and documentation.
311/IT 314 Database Management (3:3:0) Prerequisite: computer programming course in high school or college. Studies logical and physical characteristics of data and their organization in computer processing. Emphasizes data as resource in computer applications; examines database management system (DBMS) software and its design, implementation, and use.
312 Computer Architecture and Operating Systems (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 310 or CS 112. Introduces computing system hardware components, architecture, organization, and operating system software concepts. Provides basic experience in assembly language programming for modern microprocessors, and examines techniques for system evaluation and selection.
315 High-Level Programming Languages (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 310 or CS 112. Studies structure and application of high-level languages by stressing design and implementation of data types, data structures, and algorithms. Includes computing lab. Credit does not count toward requirements for major in computer science.
316 Software Systems Engineering (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 310 or CS 211. Studies programming environments, including software tools and control of software development for large information systems engineering projects.
462/IT 462: Information Security Principles (3:3:0) Prerequisite: IT 212 or equivalent. Studies 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; and legal and social issues.
498 Independent Study in Information Systems Engineering (1-3:0:0) Prerequisite: 60 credits; must be arranged with instructor and approved by department chair before registering. Directed self-study of special topics of current interest in INFS. May be repeated for maximum 6 credits if topics 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 maximum 6 credits if topics are substantially different.
501 Discrete and Logical Structures for Information Systems (3:3:0) Prerequisite: 6 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 BS degree in computer science.
514 Database Design and Management (3:3:0) Prerequisites: one programming course, and 6 credits of college math. Relational database management systems. Covers logical and physical database design, query languages, and databases programming, and examines commercial systems. Computing lab.
515 Computer Organization (3:3:0) Prerequisite: 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. Also covers symbolic assembly language and interrupts and input/output organization. Credit cannot be applied to any graduate degree in IT&E or the BS degree in computer science.
565 Database and Distributed System Security Principles (3:3:0) Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Introduces information and distributed system security fundamentals. Topics include notions of security, threats and attacks; legal-ethical issues; security evaluation; data models, concepts, and mechanisms for database and distributed system security; inference in statistical databases; basic issues in operating system, application and network security.
590 Program Design and Data Structures (3:3:0) Prerequisite: undergraduate courses or equivalent knowledge in structured programming in high-level language. Studies fundamentals of data structures and algorithms applied in programming solutions to application problems. Stresses programming in modern high-level language. Laboratory required. Credit cannot be applied to any graduate degree in IT&E.
601 Operating Systems Theory and Practice (3:3:0) Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, 590, and SWE 510, 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. Examines impact of computer architecture on operating systems. Presents case studies and comparative analysis of operating systems. No substitution can be made for this class.
612: Principles and Practices of Communication Networks (3:3:0) Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, 590, and SWE 510, or equivalent. Introduces principles of computer networks and applications to Internet. Discusses details of layering, protocols, performance, resource allocation, management, security and other contemporary issues related to networks. Examples of 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 performance. No substitutions can be made for this class.
614 Database Management (3:3:0) Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, 590, and SWE 510, or equivalent. Introduces database systems, emphasizing study of database models and languages and practice of database design and programming. Topics include Entity-Relationship model, relational model and its formal query languages, SQL, theory of relational database design, and object-oriented and logic-based databases. Requires computing lab. No substitutions can be made for this class.
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. Includes cases, computing lab.
623 Classical and Web 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 web.
640 Introduction to Electronic Commerce (3:3:0) Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, and 590, or equivalent. Studies electronic commerce from both managerial, technical perspectives. Topics include e-commerce models and concepts; Internet and web protocols and infrastructure; e-commerce marketing and branding; security protocols and standards; e-commerce payment systems; and case studies of business-to-consumer, business-to-business, consumer-to-consumer, and e-government.
650 Development Frameworks for Information Systems Applications (3:3:0) Prerequisites: INFS 501, 515, and 590; or equivalent. Principles and methods of building commercial applications within high-level framework. Tools for system construction are considered, along with variety of programming languages, component integration, and design methods. Applications investigated through program construction in varied settings, such as database systems, graphical user interfaces, and prototyping. Requires programming projects.
697 Topics in Information Systems (1-6:1-6:0) Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Presents special topics in information systems not occurring in regular INFS sequence. May be repeated for credit when distinct offerings of course differ in subject.
740 Database Programming for the World Wide Web (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 614. Information systems accessible through web and Internet are becoming prevalent. Course focuses on technologies and industry standards for accessing and manipulating persistent data that are suitable for web applications.
750 Application Frameworks for Windowed Information Systems (3:3:0) Prerequisites: INFS 601 and 650. Studies 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 encapsulation of windowed architectures by object-oriented frameworks; and analysis and design of windowed applications. Illustrates various features of visual application frameworks using variety of information systems applications. Programming projects.
755 Data Warehousing and Mining (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 614 or equivalent. Covers techniques for designing and maintaining large data warehouses. Topics include OLAP, star schemas, data integration, data cleaning, maintenance of views in presence of updates to sources, and query processing of warehouses. Second part of course focuses on mining data from warehouses. Topics include data mining techniques such as classification, clustering, association rules, mining of time-series and complex data. Emphasizes 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, and security and integrity. Discusses recent developments and research directions.
764 Object-Oriented Database Systems (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 614 or CS 650, or permission of instructor. Knowledge of object-oriented programming language such as C++ highly desirable. Studies concepts and systems of object-oriented (OO) databases. Topics include OO design, data models, query languages, new data types, and implementation. Also includes detailed case study and project performed on OO-DBMS. Surveys various prototypes, commercially available systems, and emerging standards.
770 Knowledge Management for E-Business (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 622, or permission of instructor. Addresses knowledge management (KM) from managerial, technical viewpoints in context of large organizations doing business over web and Internet. Topics include KM life cycle for knowledge creation, aggregation, dissemination, and sharing; ontology modeling, design, and engineering; role of standards such as XML, RDF, web services, and semantic web for e-business; business rules and reasoning engines; and digital rights management for e-business.
785 Data Mining for Homeland Security (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 755. Covers analytic techniques for investigative analysis. Topics include small world graphs as way to model groups and organizations, relational data mining with emphasis in predictive models, alias discovery techniques, and profiling.
790 Information Systems Policy and Administration (3:3:0) Prerequisite: completion of all core courses. Should be taken in final semester before graduation. Capstone course integrating technical and executive policy issues of information systems. Examines critical executive issues through case studies and comprehensive individual project. No substitutions can be made for this class.
795 Special Topics in Data Mining Applications (3:3:0) Prerequisite: INFS 755. Focuses on interdisciplinary applications of data mining. Topics selected from following: web and text data mining, e-commerce, bioinformatics, security and intelligence analysis, data mining of economical data. Each topic analyzed in depth; state-of-the-art techniques in application of data mining to field extensively covered.
796 Directed Readings in Information Technology (3:3:0) Prerequisite: graduate standing in information systems, with at least 12 prior credits in MS. To register, students must complete independent study form available in department office. It must be initialed by faculty sponsor and approved by department chairman. Research and analysis of contemporary problem in information system development. Prior approval required by faculty sponsor who supervises student's work. Written report required. Maximum 6 credits may be earned.
797 Advanced Topics in Information Systems (3:3:0) Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Special advanced topics not occurring in regular INFS sequence. May be repeated for credit when distinct offerings of course differ in subject.
798 Research Project (3:3:0) Prerequisite: 18 credits applicable toward MS. To register, students must complete independent study form available in department office. It must be initialed by faculty sponsor and approved by department chairman. Research project chosen under guidance of full-time graduate faculty member, resulting in written technical report. Prior approval required by faculty sponsor who supervises student's work.
799 Thesis (1-6:0:0) Prerequisite: 18 credits applicable toward MS. To register, students must complete independent study form available in department office. It must be initialed by faculty sponsor and approved by department chairman. Original or compilary work evaluated by a committee of three faculty members.