| Sci-Tech Dictionary: software engineering |
(computer science) The systematic application of scientific and technological knowledge, through the medium of sound engineering principles, to the production of computer programs, and to the requirements definition, functional specification, design description, program implementation, and test methods that lead up to this code.
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| Sci-Tech Encyclopedia: Software engineering |
The process of manufacturing software systems. A software system consists of executable computer code and the supporting documents needed to manufacture, use, and maintain the code. For example, a word processing system consists of an executable program (the word processor), user manuals, and the documents, such as requirements and designs, needed to produce the executable program and manuals. See also Software engineering.
Software engineering is ever more important as larger, more complex, and life-critical software systems proliferate. The rapid decline in the costs of computer hardware means that the software in a typical system often costs more than the hardware it runs on. Large software systems may be the most complex things ever built. This places great demands on the software engineering process, which must be disciplined and controlled.
To meet this challenge, software engineers have adapted many techniques from older engineering fields, as well as developing new ones. For example, divide and conquer, a well-known technique for handling complex problems, is used in many ways in software engineering. The software engineering process itself, for example, is usually divided into phases. The definition of these phases, their ordering, and the interactions between the phases specify a software life-cycle model. The best-known life-cycle model is the waterfall model consisting of a requirements definition phase, a design phase, a coding phase, a testing phase, and a maintenance phase. The output of each phase serves as the input to the next. See also Systems engineering.
The purpose of the requirements phase is to define what a system should do and the constraints under which it must operate. This information is recorded in a requirements document. A typical requirements document might include a product overview; a specification of the development, operating, and maintenance environment for the product; a high-level conceptual model of the system; a specification of the user interface; specification of functional requirements; specification of nonfunctional requirements; specification of interfaces to systems outside the system under development; specification of how errors will be handled; and a listing of possible changes and enhancements to the system. Each requirement, usually numbered for reference, must be testable.
In the design phase, a plan is developed for how the system will implement the requirements. The plan is expressed using a design method and notation. Many methods and notations for software design have been developed. Each method focuses on certain aspects of a system and ignores or minimizes others. This is similar to viewing a building with an architectural drawing, a plumbing diagram, an electrical wiring diagram, and so forth.
The coding phase of the software life-cycle is concerned with the development of code that will implement the design. This code is written is a formal language called a programming language. Programming languages have evolved over time from sequences of ones and zeros directly interpretable by a computer, through symbolic machine code, assembly languages, and finally to higher-level languages that are more understandable to humans. See also Programming languages.
Most coding today is done in one of the higher-level languages. When code is written in a higher-level language, it is translated into assembly code, and eventually machine code, by a compiler. Many higher-level languages have been developed, and they can be categoriged as functional languages, declarative languages, and imperative languages.
Following the principle of modularity, code on large systems is separated into modules, and the modules are assigned to individual programmers. A programmer typically writes the code using a text editor. Sometimes a syntax-directed editor that “knows” about a given programming language and can provide programming templates and check code for syntax errors is used. Various other tools may be used by a programmer, including a debugger that helps find errors in the code, a profiler that shows which parts of a module spend most time executing, and optimizers that make the code run faster.
Testing is the process of examining a software product to find errors. This is necessary not just for code but for all life-cycle products and all documents in support of the software such as user manuals.
The software testing process is often divided into phases. The first phase is unit testing of software developed by a single programmer. The second phase is integration testing where units are combined and tested as a group. System testing is done on the entire system, usually with test cases developed from the system requirements. Acceptance testing of the system is done by its intended users.
The basic unit of testing is the test case. A test case consists of a test case type, which is the aspect of the system that the test case is supposed to exercise; test conditions, which consist of the input values for the test; the environmental state of the system to be used in the test; and the expected behavior of the system given the inputs and environmental factors.
When software is changed to fix a bug or add an enhancement, a serious error is often introduced. To ensure that this does not happen, all test cases must be rerun after each change. The process of rerunning test cases to ensure that no error has been introduced is called regression testing. See also Software testing and inspection.
Walkthroughs and inspections are used to improve the quality of the software development process. Consequently, the software products created by the process are improved. A quality system is a collection of techniques whose application results in continuous improvement in the quality of the development process. Elements of the quality system include reviews, inspections, and process audits.
Large software systems are not static; rather, they change frequently both during development and after deployment. Maintenance is the phase of the software life-cycle after deployment. The maintenance phase may cost more than all of the others combined and is thus of primary concern to software organizations. The Y2K problem was, for example, a maintenance problem.
Maintenance consists of three activities: adaptation, correction, and enhancement. Enhancement is the process of adding new functionality to a system. This is usually done at the request of system users. This activity requires a full life-cycle of its own. That is, enhancements demand requirements, design, implementation, and test. Studies have shown that about half of maintenance effort is spent on enhancements.
Adaptive maintenance is the process of changing a system to adapt it to a new operating environment, for example, moving a system from the Windows operating system to the Linux operating system. Adaptive maintenance has been found to account for about a quarter of total maintenance effort. Corrective maintenance is the process of fixing errors in a system after release. Corrective maintenance takes about 20% of maintenance effort.
Since software systems change frequently over time, an important activity is software configuration management. This consists of tracking versions of life-cycle objects, controlling changes to them, and monitoring relationships among them. Configuration management activities include version control, which involves keeping track of versions of life-cycle objects; change control, an orderly process of handling change requests to a system; and build control, the tracking of which versions of work products go together to form a given version of a software product.
| Hoover's Profile: Software Engineering Corporation |
|
7900 International Dr., Ste. 305 Minneapolis, MN 55425 MN Tel. 952-854-7175 Toll Free 888-854-7175 Fax 952-854-7468 |
Type: Private
On the web:
http://www.sencorsoft.com
Employees:
20
Software Engineering can help you build up your data management expertise. The company (which does business as SENCOR) provides software used for tasks such as storage, data, and content management. Its products (such as iCAS) enable customers to store, retrieve, distribute, and manage data in a variety of formats and geographical locations. SENCOR's customers come from industries such as financial services, health care, manufacturing, and technology. The company also provides professional services such as consulting, training, support, maintenance, and implementation.
Key numbers for fiscal year ending August, 2007:
Sales: $6.0M
Officers:
CEO: Carmen Canessa
VP Engineering: John Canessa
VP Sales and Marketing: Gino Canessa
Competitors:
EMC
Hitachi Data Systems
Symantec
| Computer Desktop Encyclopedia: software engineering |
The design, development and documentation of software. See software engineer, systems analysis & design, programming, object-oriented programming, software metrics, CASE and Systemantics.
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| Business Dictionary: Software Engineering |
The programming and production that go into the software development process.
| Wikipedia: Software engineering |
Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software.[1]
The term software engineering first appeared in the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference and was meant to provoke thought regarding the current "software crisis" at the time.[2] [3] Since then, it has continued as a profession and field of study dedicated to creating software that is of higher quality, more affordable, maintainable, and quicker to build. Since the field is still relatively young compared to its sister fields of engineering, there is still much debate around what software engineering actually is, and if it conforms to the classical definition of engineering. It has grown organically out of the limitations of viewing software as just programming. Software development is a term sometimes preferred by practitioners[who?] in the industry who view software engineering as too heavy-handed and constrictive to the malleable process of creating software.[citation needed] Although software engineering is a young profession, the field's future looks bright as Money Magazine and Salary.com rated software engineering as the best job in America in 2006.[4] Furthermore, if you rank the number of engineers in the United States by discipline, the number of software engineers tops the list.
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The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the USA and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
Contents |
When the modern digital computer first appeared in 1941[citation needed], the instructions to make it operate were wired into the machine. Practitioners quickly realized that this design was not flexible and came up with the "stored program architecture" or von Neumann architecture. Thus the first division between "hardware" and "software" began with abstraction being used to deal with the complexity of computing.
Programming languages started to appear in the 1950s and this was also another major step in abstraction. Major languages such as Fortran, Algol, and Cobol were released in the late 1950s to deal with scientific, algorithmic, and business problems respectively. E. W. Dijsktra wrote his seminal paper, "Go To Statement Considered Harmful",[5] in 1968 and David Parnas introduced the key concept of modularity and information hiding in 1972[6] to help programmers deal with the ever increasing complexity of software systems. A software system for managing the hardware called an operating system was also introduced, most notably by Unix in 1969. In 1967, the Simula language introduced the object-oriented programming paradigm.
These advances in software were met with more advances in computer hardware. In the mid 1970s, the microcomputer was introduced, making it economical for hobbyists to obtain a computer and write software for it. This in turn lead to the now famous Personal Computer or PC and Microsoft Windows. The Software Development Life Cycle or SDLC was also starting to appear as a consensus for centralized construction of software in the mid 1980s. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the introduction of several new Simula-inspired object-oriented programming languages, including C++, Smalltalk, and Objective C.
Open-source software started to appear in the early 90s in the form of Linux and other software introducing the "bazaar" or decentralized style of constructing software.[7] Then the Internet and World Wide Web hit in the mid 90s changing the engineering of software once again. Distributed Systems gained sway as a way to design systems and the Java programming language was introduced as another step in abstraction having its own virtual machine. Programmers collaborated and wrote the Agile Manifesto that favored more light weight processes to create cheaper and more timely software.
The current definition of software engineering is still being debated by practitioners today as they struggle to come up with ways to produce software that is "cheaper, bigger, quicker".
While some areas, such as Ontario, Canada[8] license software engineers, most places in the world have no laws regarding the profession of software engineers. Yet there are some guides from the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM, the two main professional organizations of software engineering. The IEEE's Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge - 2004 Version or SWEBOK defines the field and gives a coverage of the knowledge practicing software engineers should have. There is also an IEEE "Software Engineering Code of Ethics".[9] In addition, there is a Software and Systems Engineering Vocabulary (SEVOCAB),[10] published on-line by the IEEE Computer Society.
In the UK, the British Computer Society licenses software engineers and members of the society can also become Chartered Engineers (CEng). But there is no legal requirement to have these qualifications.
In 2004, the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 760,840 software engineers holding jobs in the U.S.; in the same time period there were some 1.4 million practitioners employed in the U.S. in all other engineering disciplines combined.[11] Due to its relative newness as a field of study, formal education in software engineering is often taught as part of a computer science curriculum, and as a result most software engineers hold computer science degrees.[12]
Most software engineers work as employees or contractors. Software engineers work with businesses, government agencies (civilian or military), and non-profit organizations. Some software engineers work for themselves as freelancers. Some organizations have specialists to perform each of the tasks in the software development process. Other organizations require software engineers to do many or all of them. In large projects, people may specialize in only one role. In small projects, people may fill several or all roles at the same time. Specializations include: in industry (analysts, architects, developers, testers, technical support, managers) and in academia (educators, researchers).
There is considerable debate over the future employment prospects for software engineers and other IT professionals. For example, an online futures market called the "ITJOBS Future of IT Jobs in America"[13] attempts to answer whether there will be more IT jobs, including software engineers, in 2012 than there were in 2002.
Professional certification of software engineers is a contentious issue. Some see it as a tool to improve professional practice; "The only purpose of licensing software engineers is to protect the public".[14]
The ACM had a professional certification program in the early 1980s,[citation needed] which was discontinued due to lack of interest. The ACM examined the possibility of professional certification of software engineers in the late 1990s, but eventually decided that such certification was inappropriate for the professional industrial practice of software engineering.[15] As of 2006[update], the IEEE had certified over 575 software professionals.[16] In the U.K. the British Computer Society has developed a legally recognized professional certification called Chartered IT Professional (CITP), available to fully qualified Members (MBCS). In Canada the Canadian Information Processing Society has developed a legally recognized professional certification called Information Systems Professional (ISP)[17]. The Software Engineering Institute offers certification on specific topic such as Security, Process improvement and Software architecture[18].
Most certification programs in the IT industry are oriented toward specific technologies, and are managed by the vendors of these technologies.[19] These certification programs are tailored to the institutions that would employ people who use these technologies.
Many students in the developed world have avoided degrees related to software engineering because of the fear of offshore outsourcing (importing software products or services from other countries) and of being displaced by foreign visa workers.[20] Although government statistics do not currently show a threat to software engineering itself; a related career, computer programming does appear to have been affected.[21][22] Often one is expected to start out as a computer programmer before being promoted to software engineer. Thus, the career path to software engineering may be rough, especially during recessions.
Some career counselors suggest a student also focus on "people skills" and business skills rather than purely technical skills because such "soft skills" are allegedly more difficult to offshore.[23] It is the quasi-management aspects of software engineering that appear to be what has kept it from being impacted by globalization.[24]
A knowledge of programming is the main pre-requisite to becoming a software engineer, but it is not sufficient. Many software engineers have degrees in Computer Science due to the lack of software engineering programs in higher education. However, this has started to change with the introduction of new software engineering degrees, especially in post-graduate education. A standard international curriculum for undergraduate software engineering degrees was defined by the CCSE.
Steve McConnell opines that because most universities teach computer science rather than software engineering, there is a shortage of true software engineers.[25] In 2004 the IEEE Computer Society produced the SWEBOK, which has become an ISO standard describing the body of knowledge covered by a software engineer[citation needed].
The European Commission within the Erasmus Mundus Programme offers a European master degree called European Master on Software Engineering for students from Europe and also outside Europe[26]. This is a joint program (double degree) involving 4 universities in Europe.
Software engineering can be divided into ten subdisciplines. They are:[1]
Software engineering is related to the disciplines of computer science, project management, and systems engineering.[27][28]
Software engineering is considered a subfield of computer science by many academics. Many of the foundations of software engineering come from computer science.
The building of a software system is usually considered a project and the management of it borrows many principles from the field of Project management.
Systems engineers have been dealing with the complexity of large systems for many decades and their knowledge is applied to many software engineering problems.
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