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development - building the system in-house. In the case of laboratory research, buying an
existing application brings requirements for adaptation to specific demands and
requirements. In some cases, the effort to adapt the application could be comparable or even
higher than the effort expended to the development on your own. Finally, lease application
from the third party can provide satisfactory compliance with the requirements, but with
higher financial costs.
There are two possibilities of building DSS application in-house - building from scratch, or
building from components. Building from scratch is suitable for specialized applications.
This option provides the best compliance with the user's requirements, but can be time-
consuming and expensive. Building from components uses available, commercial, freeware
or open source components, and creates the required application via their integration.
In-house application development includes several development approaches and
techniques. The three most common are System Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Rapid
Application Development (RAD) techniques, such as Prototyping, and End-User
Development (Turban et. al., 2008).
SDLC is the traditional method of application development, mostly used for large DSS
projects. It is a structured framework consisting of the follow-up processes by which an
application is developed. Traditional SDLC consists of four basic phases - planning,
analysis, design, and implementation (PADI), which lead to deployed system. Scheme of
traditional SDLC is in Figure 4.
Rapid Application Development are methodologies for adapting SDLC, so the system can
be develop quickly and some of the system functionalities can be available to users as soon
as possible. It is an incremental development with permanent feedback from potential users.
RAD methodology breaks a system into a number of versions that are developed
sequentially. Each version has more features than the previous one, so the system is
developed in steps.
The most widely used methodology of RAD is Prototyping. This methodology involves
performing the stages of analysis, design, and implementation concurrently and repeatedly.
After each increase in development, the system is presented to the potential users.
Fig. 4. Traditional application development approach - SDLC
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