Terms Related To Computer Software

Software Documentation

These days, the task of software documentation is considered very important because it helps the end users in understanding the program, its working, its functionality and how to make use of it. If there is no clear software documentation, then sometimes it becomes really hard to use the software especially in the cases when the software is very specialized and very complex like the Photoshop software or the AutoCAD. There may be Developer documentation as well that consists of code as well as comments in separate files, and details out working of the entire programs and the ways through which it can be modified.

Software Standard

It is easy to design software with the help of many different kinds of programming languages that may work in variety of the operating systems as well as operating environments. For this purpose a software standard is required. The main benefit of the software standard is that it helps different software to understand as well as exchange information that is prevailing between each other. Like in case of the email that is sent from Microsoft Outlook, it is necessary to make sure that it is readable from the Yahoo! Mail and other mails.

Software License

A software license provides a user with the rights to make use of the software in a licensed environment. It has been seen that most of the software usually comes out with the license when they are purchased off shelf. There can be an OEM license also that comes bundled with the hardware. There is much other software that comes with free software license, and grants the recipient all the rights through which he can modify as well as redistribute the software. Software is usually found in the form of freeware or shareware where it is free to use.

Software Patent

Software patent is usually considered a controversial topic in the software industry because different people hold different views on it. The main controversy over the software patents is that the specific algorithm and specific technique that is used in the development of software cannot be duplicated by other people because it is considered as a copyright infringement and an intellectual property depending mainly on the severity.

Software Industry

A software industry consists of many different entities as well as peoples that are responsible for producing software. Software is used increasingly in many areas like finance, data mining, web searching, mathematics, gaming, space exploration, and mining.  There are many non-profit organizations for software development like Free Software Foundation, Mozilla, and GNU Project. Besides this, there are many organizations for software standard like IETF, W3C, and others. These organizations try to come up with software standards so that software can work as well as interoperate with others through standards like XML, HTTP, HTML, or FTP. There are many famous software companies like Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, SAP, Corel, Symantec, and Adobe Systems.

Software Quality, Software Reliability And Software Testing

Software quality is considered as very important, mainly for the commercial system software like Linux, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Windows. In case software is faulty or buggy, then it can delete work of the person and can crash the computer leading it to do unexpected things. In terms of computer Faults as well as errors are also known as the “bugs.” It is possible to discover and eliminate bugs with the help of software testing. Software testing can be defined as a domain that is independent of the tasks like development and programming. It consists of various different methods that can be used to test as well as declare software products fit before they can be for use by an individual or by a group.

Software testing is very important activity and this fact can be seen because all of the major software companies like Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Novell have their own separate departments for the software testing with the goal of only testing. There are many ways to perform software testing like regression testing, black box testing, unit testing, and other methods. Some of these methods can be carried out manually, and some are done automatically in case the code to be tested is quite large. For example, organizations like NASA have an extremely rigorous procedure for software testing that is carried out many different operating systems as well as communication functions.

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