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Bells and Whistles bells and whistles elaborate features added to a computer program. The phrase bells and whistles usually connotes that the features are unneces- sary and confusing; it originally referred to sound effects devices on the- ater organs in the silent movie era. Benchmark benchmark a computer program used to test the performance of a computer or a [...]

Auction auction a sale in which buyers make bids (offers) and the highest offer is accepted. For information about online auctions see EBAY. See also DUTCH AUCTION; RESERVE PRICE; BID. Audio audio sound, represented by means of electronic signals. See also SOUND CARD; FM SYNTHESIS; WAVETABLE SYNTHESIS; MIDI. Contrast VIDEO. FIGURE 20. Audio (sound) waveform displayed graphically Audit trail audit trail a record kept by a [...]

Anonymous variable anonymous variable in Prolog, a variable (written _) that does not retain a value. If several anonymous variables occur in the same fact or rule, they are not the same variable. In pattern matching, anonymous variables match anything. See PROLOG ANSI ANSI (American National Standards Institute) the main industrial stan- dardization organization in the United States. There are official ANSI [...]

alpha alpha (α) a measure of the opacity, or visibility, of an object in a graphical image. A transparent object has an alpha of 0 and is invisible; most objects have an alpha of 1 and completely cover the objects behind them. alpha channel (in paint programs) a CHANNEL that defines a selection. Instead of specifying a color of [...]

Agent agent a piece of software that performs a service for someone, usually silently and automatically. For example, an agent might run on a CLIENT computer to keep the SERVER informed of its needs. aggregation point a point where signals from different wireless network nodes are collected and then connected by wire to the rest of the Internet. AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) a fast [...]

Activate 1. to choose a window in which you want to type. This is done by mov- ing the mouse pointer into the window and clicking one button. In some 11 ActiveX operating systems you must click on the window’s title bar. See WINDOW. 2. to start a piece of software by double-clicking on its name or icon. See CLICK; ICON. [...]

Just like any other software, the operating system code can be structured in different ways. The following are some of the commonly used structures. Simple/Monolithic Structure In this case, the operating system code has not structure. It is written for functionality andefficiency (in terms of time and space). DOS and UNIX are examples of such [...]

An interrupt is a signal generated by a hardware device (usually an I/O device) to get CPU’s attention. Interrupt transfers control to the interrupt service routine  (ISR), generally through the interrupt vector  table,  which contains the addresses of all the service routines. The interrupt service routine executes; on completion the CPU resumes the  interrupted  computation. [...]

In the business world, most of the programming is database-oriented. In today’s databases, like Oracle and SQL Server, a different kind of language is used. These are the languages that are called as structured query languages i.e. SQL. SQL, is so important that a standard has been developed for it. So there is an ANSI [...]

The C language was developed in late 60’s and early 70’s, in Bell Laboratories. In those days BCPL and B languages were developed there. The BCPL language was developed in 1967 by Martin Richards as a language for writing operating systems software and compilers. In 1970 Ken Thompson used B language to create early versions [...]

Computer  Software Categories Software is categorized into two main categories o    System Software o    Application Software System Software The system software controls the computer. It communicates with computer’s hardware (key board, mouse, modem, sound card etc) and controls different aspects of operations. Sub categories of system software are: Operating system Device drivers Utilities   Operating [...]

Secure Windows Pro is desktop Application software that protect, manage and Optimize PC. its the combination of Windows tweaks and utilities.Secure Windows will let the User take control of his PC more then ever before, including enhanced security, protection, more efficient workability and error free. As well as, a user-friendly interface makes it easy for [...]

Learning Objectives: After going through this lecture, you would be able to have an understanding of the following topics: Cash Management & Working Capital Financing Cash Dividend Payout Decision: Link between Dividend Policy & Cash Management – Cash Dividends are paid out of Cash! Cash is an idle asset that do not generate any return [...]

What is PHP? PHP stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”. It is a server-side scripting language. PHP scripts are executed on the server and it is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. The main goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated web pages quickly. Its [...]

Ada Design Goals Ada is a computer programming language originally designed to support the construction of long-lived, highly reliable software systems. Its design emphasizes readability, avoids error-prone notation, encourages reuse and team coordination, and it is designed to be efficiently implementable. A significant advantage of Ada is its reduction of debugging time. Ada tries to [...]

Dynamic typing Mixing arithmetic and string operations String operations including concatenation GOTO control structure Overloaded operators Space as an operator Run-time compilation code can be embedded in data, allowing easy run-time extension of programs Variable length string Array tables and record type objects Absence of declaration Operator overloading. Issues Developers of SNOBOL had no or [...]

SNOBOL stands for StriNg Oriented SymBOlic Language. It is a Special purpose language for string manipulation and handling. It was developed in 1962 at the Bell Labs by Farber, Griswold, and Polensky. It was created out of the frustrations of working with the languages of that time because they required the de velopers to write large programs [...]

CMM Maturity Levels There are five levels defined along the continuum of the CMM and, according to the SEI: “Predictability, effectiveness, and control of an organization’s software processes are believed to improve as the organization moves up these five levels. While not rigorous, the empirical evidence to date supports this belief.” Level 1 – Ad [...]

The legacy system also needs to be assessed from an environment’s perspective. This involves looking at the supplier, failure rate, age, performance, support requirements, maintenance cost, and interoperability. These angles are elaborated in the following paragraph: Supplier stability: Is the supplier still in existence? Is the supplier financially stable and likely to continue in existence? [...]

A system is considered to be a legacy system if it has been in operation for many years. A legacy system has many components. These include business processes, business rules, application software, application data, support software, and system hardware. Maintaining Legacy System Maintaining legacy system is expensive. It is often the case that different parts [...]

Measurement of change activity is a way to assess the stability of the requirements and to identify opportunities for process improvement. In this regards, the following could be measured The number of change requests received, open, and closed The cumulative number of changes made including added, deleted, and modified requirements The number of change requests [...]

CM standards CM should always be based on a set of standards which are applied within an organisation. Standards should define how items are identified, how changes are controlled and how new versions are managed. Standards may be based on external CM standards (e.g. IEEE standard for CM ANSI/IEEE Std. No. 828-1983, 1042-1987, 1028-1988). Existing [...]

As defined by CMM, the purpose of SCM is to establish and maintain the integrity or software products through the project’s life cycle. Configuration management is concerned with managing evolving software systems. It acknowledges that system change is a team activity and thus it aims to control the costs and effort involved in making changes [...]

You may recall that software configuration management (SCM) is one of the five KPA required for an organization to be at CMM level 2. That means, according to SEI, effective project management is not possible without having a proper SCM function in place. The basic idea behind SCM is to manage and control change. As [...]

Poka-yoke is a QA technique developed by Shingo at Toyota in 1960’s. Poka-yoke devices are mechanisms that lead to prevention of potential quality problem before it occurs or the rapid detection of quality problems if they are introduced. Examples: Light on if the car door is not properly closed Warning beep if the engine is [...]

Software Safety is a software SQA activity that focuses on identification of potential hazards that may affect software negatively and cause an entire system to fail. Modeling and analysis process is conducted as part of software safety and hazards are identified and categorized by criticality and risk. Example Let us assume that the following hazards [...]

Statistical SQA is a technique that measures the quality in a quantitative fashion. It implies that information about defects is collected and categorized and an attempt is made to trace each defect to underlying cause. It uses Pareto Principle to identify vital causes (80% of defects can be traced to 20% of causes) and moves [...]

Formal Technical Reviews are conducted by software engineers. The primary objective is to find errors during the process so that they do not become defects after release of software as they uncover errors in function, logic design, or implementation. The idea is to have early discovery of errors so they do not propagate to the [...]

Software reviews are the filter for the software engineering process. They re applied at various different points and serve to uncover errors that can be removed and help to purify the software engineering activities. In this context it is useful to look at the “V-model” of software development. This model emphasizes that SQA is a [...]

Quality cannot be assured without first understanding its nature and characteristics. So the first question one has to ask is: what is quality? Software quality is defined as conformance to explicitly stated functional and non-functional requirements, explicitly documented development standards, and implicit characteristics that are expected of all professionally developed software. This definition emphasizes upon [...]