Implementing flexible software techniques in a 4GL environment

Today more IT professionals arc employed on the maintenance of existing software applications than are employed to develop new systems. Why is there such a need for this maintenance? Part of the problem is that developers have traditionally seen system requirements as fixed from the time they have been \u27signed off. In reality requirements arc dynamic and subject to change as an organisation\u27s environment changes. Flexible software techniques recognise that software requirements are subject to future changes. Flexibility is seen as an important design goal criterion with true or strong flexibility implying that an application\u27s behaviour can be altered without the need for changing program code. The purpose of this study is to: - Identify flexible software techniques described in the current literature. - Identify features present in the Oracle suite of tools that can lead to flexibility. - Design and implement a demonstration application that demonstrates both the flexible techniques and features identified

Meeting the Challenge of Dynamic User Requirements Using Data-Driven Techniques on a 4GL-Database Environment

Accompanying the ever-growing reliance on computers within contemporary organisations, the task of software maintenance is, increasingly, becoming a resource burden. The author has identified that there is a need for proven techniques to allow the modelling of flexible/changing user requirement, to enable systems to cope with requirements creep without suffering major code change and associated down-time from rebuilds of the database. This study ascertains the applicability of extension to current data modelling techniques that allows innate flexibility within the data model. The extension of the data model is analysed for potential benefits in the provision of such a dynamic/flexible base to realise \u27maintenance friendly\u27 systems and, in consequence, alleviate the cost of later, expensive maintenance

Situated Software Design

In computer science we are used to characterize systems in terms of levels of virtual machines. In other words, we are dealing with virtual worlds. For virtual worlds the rationalistic perspective is well suited, i.e. general rules can be logically applied to situations characterized by objects with well-defined properties. However, software design is concerned with developing systems for the real world. The real world differs in several crucial points from virtual ones: it changes continuously, it is largely unpredictable, and it is only partially knowable. Many design approaches have not sufficiently taken these points into account. A number of alternative approaches have been proposed, but they have been largely ad-hoc and lack theoretical rigor. We show the need for a more suitable approach to software design. We believe that the idea of situatedness can provide the basis for such an approach. Situatedness is based on the fact that people are involved in a continuous interaction wi..