Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
advantages are its consistency and flexibility. Its disadvantages are its unfamil-
iarity (causing an added training cost for developers) and its inability to work with
existing systems (a major benefit of C++) (Bray
2005
).
9.7 Development Paradigms
9.7.1 Component-Based Development
Described as a reuse-oriented approach to software development, component-
based development of software relies on the reuse and integration of software
components. This approach aims to improve efficiency and reduce risk in devel-
opment by reducing the amount of software to be developed. Between require-
ments specification and system validation in usual stages of the software process,
this approach requires the following stages (Sommerville
2004
):
1. Component Analysis: This stage requires the team to find components that at
least partially fit the functionality needs of the software as laid out during
requirements specification.
2. Requirements Modification: Requirements are altered to match the available
functionality of the found software components to be used. If requirements are
unable to be altered to fit the components, better solutions may be searched for.
3. System Design with Reuse: A framework for the software is designed or re-
implemented to fit the components that are being reused.
4. Development and Integration: Components that were not found for reuse may
be developed and integrated with reused components in the system.
9.7.2 Extreme Programming
Extreme programming (XP) represents a process for the agile development of
software (Pressman
2005
). Agile development, aiming to produce incremental
software delivery, can be done via the methods and activities laid out in the XP
approach. This approach, in general, will break software into releasable increments
and aim to quickly and simply develop those increments. XP can be broken into
four major activities of development; these activities include the following:
1. Planning. To begin development using the extreme programming paradigm,
planning will occur in which the customer will begin by customer writes a set
of stories describing features of the desired software. These stories, which
break up features into small enough parts so that each story will only take a few
weeks of development, are ranked by both the customer and team for priority
and cost respectively (cost refers to the length of time needed to develop it).
