Systems Development: Design, Implementation, Maintenance, and Review - Principles of Information Systems - page 556

be used. In addition, in-house developed software is often constantly changing. 48 According
the Chief Scientist at IBM's Rational Software Corporation, “Software has been and will
remain fundamentally hard… Today, a typical system tends to be continuously evolving.
You never turn it off.” A few of the tools and techniques used to develop in-house software
are briefly discussed below.
• CASE and object-oriented approaches. As mentioned in Chapter 12, CASE tools and

the object-oriented approach are often used during software development. AXA Financial
Services, for example, saved millions of dollars in developing a system by reusing software.
JetBlue Airways worked with Visual Studio .NET to implement an inventory tracking
system that used the object-oriented approach.

cross-platform development
A development technique that
allows programmers to develop
programs that can run on computer
systems having different hardware
and operating systems, or
platforms.

•

Cross-platform development. One software development technique, called cross-
platform development , allows programmers to develop programs that can run on
computer systems that have different hardware and operating systems, or platforms. Web
service tools, such as .NET by Microsoft, introduced in Chapter 7, are examples. With
cross-platform development, for example, the same program can run on both a personal
computer and a mainframe or on two different types of PCs.

•

integrated development
environments (IDEs)
A development approach that
combines the tools needed for
programming with a programming
language into one integrated
package.

Integrated development environment. Integrated development environments (IDEs)
combine the tools needed for programming with a programming language in one
integrated package. An IDE allows programmers to use simple screens, customized pull-
down menus, and graphical user interfaces. Visual Studio from Microsoft is an example
of an IDE. Oracle Designer, which is used with Oracle's database system, is another
example of an IDE. The popular Eclipse Workbench supports IDEs that can be used
with the C and C++ programming languages. Eclipse Workbench includes a debugger
and a compiler, along with other tools.

•

Documentation. With internally developed software, documentation i s always
important. Technical documentation is used by computer operators to execute the
program and by analysts and programmers to solve problems or modify the program. In
technical documentation, the purpose of every major piece of computer code is written
out and explained. Key variables are also described. User documentation is developed
for the people who use the program. This type of documentation shows users, in easy-
to-understand terms, how the program can and should be used. Incorporating a
description of the benefits of the new application into user documentation can help
stakeholders understand the reasons for the program and speed user acceptance.

technical documentation
Written details used by computer
operators to execute the program
and by analysts and programmers to
solve problems or modify the
program.

user documentation
Written descriptions developed for
people who use a program, showing
users, in easy-to-understand terms,
how the program can and should be
used.

Acquiring Database and Telecommunications Systems
Because databases are a blend of hardware and software, many of the approaches discussed
earlier for acquiring hardware and software also apply to database systems including open-
source databases. 49 MasterCard International needed to acquire additional storage capacity.
Existing storage capacity was about to run out as the company expanded its business. Instead
of adding incremental storage capacity, the company decided to use a large-scale storage area
network (SAN). The results were immediate and apparent. Virtual databases and database as
a service (DaaS) are also popular ways to acquire database capabilities. 50 Sirius XM Radio,
Bank of America, and Southwest Airlines, for example, use the DaaS approach to manage
many of their database operations from the Internet. 51 In another case, a brokerage company
was able to reduce storage capacity by 50 percent by using database virtualization. 52
With the increased use of e-commerce, the Internet, intranets, and extranets, telecom-
munications is one of the fastest-growing applications for today's organizations. Medical
Missions for Children (MMC), for example, uses medical diagnosis through teleconferencing
to treat children and improve their lives. 53 Like database systems, telecommunications sys-
tems require a blend of hardware and software. For personal computer systems, the primary
piece of hardware is a modem. For client/server and mainframe systems, the hardware can
include multiplexers, concentrators, communications processors, and a variety of network
equipment. Communications software will also have to be acquired from a software company
or developed in-house. Again, the earlier discussion on acquiring hardware and software also
applies to the acquisition of telecommunications hardware and software.