Studieinformasjon
You can find detailed study information concerning my third year in Management Informatics here.
Subject |
Simplified Program |
U.C. |
Numeric Methods |
1st. Semester
2nd. Semester
|
8 |
Financial
|
|
2 |
Business Management |
|
2 |
Information Systems II |
|
7 |
Databases |
This subject has a strong laboratorial component because of the Project (read my evolution). Oracle, SQL, PHP used quite a lot. |
7 |
Operating Systems, Components and their use |
|
6 |
U.C. Unidades de Crédito = Credits = Says how mych weight every subject has. To calculate the final mark of the course you do this: Calculate the sum of (mark x U.C.) of all subjects. (Sum / Total U.C.) = final mark.
Mine erfaringer og karakterer
See how I did the third year (2002-2003) of Management Informatics.
General
This year was undoubtedly the most difficult until now! This is my personal opinion and the general one as well.
We executed a software development project (where I was elected leader of a group consisting of 13 members) which started at the beginning of the school-year, and lasted until just before the final exams. We produced hundreds of pages of documentation: various reports, software documentation, progress documentations and project plans, plus the modeling, design and programming of the software to develop.
Additionally, it seemed that all the professors in the various subjects insisted on giving us as much work to do as possible. Getting through it all was hard, but in the end I guess I have never learnt as much in a year before!
Subject |
Commentary |
Mark |
Numeric Methods |
Teachers: – Senhorinha Teixeira (Lectures, 1. Sem) – Lino Costa (Lab, 1. Sem) – J. M. Valério de Carvalho (Lectures, 2. Sem) – Ângela Silva (Lab, 2. Sem) The First Semester treated Numeric Methods, and the Second one Operational Investigation. Both Semesters were interesting, but I feel that the second was more adequate to my needs and better adapted to my course. We worked in MatLab during the first semester and developed a program that would optimize storage costs depending on various parameters fed to it. This part was quite exciting, but I question the accuracy and practical use of this kind of program (because of its simplicity). Anyway, it was an INTRODUCTION to non-linear optimization, so I guess that explains my doubts! The second semester treated very interesting linear problems. My favorites were the transportation problems and binary programming models. I feel this has a vast potential optimizing costs in great enterprises and small companies as one can easily solve complex problems by using relatively simple and accurate methods. |
18 |
Financial
|
Teacher: – A. C. Fernandes Maybe a more accurate name would be Financial Management. Anyway, this subject was a hard nut to crack for most of my colleagues, and I had by far the best mark in my year. Although I obtained a good mark, I wouldn’t say that the subject brought me much new. We learnt many theoretical concepts concerning cash-flows, maintaining a company ready to pay all bills on time, techniques to better its cash-flow problems and so on. We learnt methods to analyze the current and possible future situation of a company using lots of indicators. I believe basic knowledge in this area is important for any director/manager, but the main job should be left to the financial analysts. |
18 |
Business Management |
Teachers: – José Crispim In this subject I guess I didn’t learn anything new. I had already had 2 years of Business Management at High School in Norway, so most part of the subject was already covered. However, I am not happy with my final mark, although being among the 2-3 best in class. I believe that this subject could have had a far more interesting curriculum, touching areas that we could actually apply in practice. Take the part of project management; we had already learnt about graphs and interpreting them, why not go more in-depth using computer programs to simulate projects and see how our decisions can change for example cost and time. I guess the same thing applies to production planning (an area that was well covered in Norway at high-school). We planned the production of one or two different products; why not use computer programs to simulate 5-10 products… I guess it would have given a quite different perspective. |
15 |
Information Systems II |
Teachers: – João Álvaro Carvalho (Lectures) The first comment I have to make is that this subject was highly philosophic and theoretic, but also very interesting as we learnt many important concepts in the area of Information Systems. Simply by being very participative and active during these classes, I enhanced my modeling skills enormously. I learnt to think more abstractly, applying generic concepts to specific problems. Actually, the whole database and structure of my website was modeled before building it. I had never imagined how it is important to model a software project before starting the programming. Even if you don’t follow the model a 100%, you follow the guidelines and know what is waiting behind the next curve. This helps a lot, especially avoiding surprises! |
19 |
Databases |
Teacher: – José Luís Pereira Maybe this was the subject in which I learnt the most this year. I said that my modeling skills had been enhanced this year in Information Systems II, but it was in Databases that I learnt how to model. We did many exercises, modeling small and medium systems. At the end of the first semester I had achieved reasonable modeling skills. During the second semester we continued modeling and learning the basics of SQL, while learning abstract concepts in Information Systems II. This combination made me achieve, in my opinion, an excellent level of modeling skills for my experience. I mentioned that I learnt SQL in this subject. Actually, Databases and Information Systems II were two key subjects this year, having the practical part joined for us to develop a Information System project during the whole year. This is the project that I mentioned earlier in the introduction to this year. The project involved a lot of modelling of a Traffic School and also software developing using Oracle Tools, and in the end a bit of ASP and, for some, PHP. This project was very interesting, especially due to the fact that we learnt to deal with planning, task delegation and solving disputes from time to time. My individual project mark was 20 (the group overall was 19), and my individual mark counted 50% of the final mark in the Databases and Information Systems II subjects. |
19 |
Operating Systems, Components and Their Use |
Teachers: – Rui José (Lectures / Lab) – Helena Rodrigues (Lab) This subject mixed theory with practice. During the first semester we worked with system calls, low level operating system functions. With this we mixed threading, concurrency questions (mutexes, semaphores and monitors) in C and Java. The second semester introduced distributed computing over networks in Java, using CORBA and Java RMI. We had to reuse the concurrency theory, guaranteeing threadsafe programs when creating for example connection daemons, enabling various users to perform operations on a server in simultaneous. I would say the subject was very important to understand networking issues, and from there get an understanding of why it’s important to take network security, efficiency, interoperability and portability seriously. Of course the first semester was also important, but it seems more like a pre-requisite to understand the second. |
18 |
| Avg. Mark 3rd. Yr. | Prize for good marks (*) | 18.25 |
| Avg. Mark Total | 17.10 |
(*)
If a student receives fourteen – 14 – or more as the average mark during a school-year, the student wins a prize and a space in a honour list. If a student receives fourteen – 14 – or more as the final mark of the course, the student may apply to take a Master Degree and / or apply for a job as a teacher at a Portuguese university.
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