CSE503, Software Engineering
Spring 1996
D. Notkin
KWIC project
25 March 1996
Due: 1 April 1996

Your boss left for a vacation in Europe just as a big contract came in. Your company is supposed to design and implement the Key Word in Context (KWIC) system, which has the following specification:

The KWIC index system accepts an ordered set of lines, with each line an ordered set of words. Any line may be ``circularly'' shited by repeatedly removing the first word and appending it at the end of the line. The KWIC index system outputs a listing of all circular shifts of all lines in alphabetical order.

Your boss was certain that if you produce a fantastic design and implementation of this system, and cap it off with a stunning presentation of the design to the customer, your company's stock will skyrocket when the fourth quarter earnings are announced. Since you own a whole wad of stock options, you're pretty eager to do this right.

But your boss is nervous about giving it to only your small team, since it's so important. So she's giving the same project to about five or six teams, thus allowing her to choose the best project. She'll be back on April 1st, and she wants you to give practice presentations of your design so she can pick the best one to spiff up for the final presentation to the customer.

Among the critical things that she'll be looking for in your project are:

• Is the specification implemented properly, and how can she tell?

• Is there a clean, well-reasoned design?

• What programming language did you choose for implementation, and why?

• Was your presentation crisp and to the point (that is, was the design and its rationale clear)?

You'd better get hopping, since getting the best overall project will have more than psychic benefits: she's announced that the company has agreed to provide 10,000 extra stock options for each member of the winning team, and to allow those options to vest twice as fast as usual.

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