Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia
Abstract
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
