Software Engineering Terms - M

MAINTENANCE

The process of supporting production software to detect and correct faults, optimize

performance, and ensure appropriate availability to end-users.

MASTER TABLE

A table containing data on which detail data in another table depends. Master tables

have a primary key that's matched to a foreign key in a detail table and often have a oneto-

many relationship with detail tables.

MEGABYTE (MB)

Approximately one million bytes. A unit of computer storage capacity.

MEGAHERTZ (MHZ)

A measure of the clock speed of the CPU in a computer. One megahertz equals one

million cycles per second.

METADATA

Data that describes the structure, organization, and/or location of data. In essence,

metadata is "data about data."

METHODOLOGY

A set of processes, procedures, and standards that defines an engineering approach to

the development of a work product.

METRICS

Numeric data representing measurements of business processes or database activity.

MILESTONE

In project management, a scheduled event of significance for which an individual or team

is accountable. Often used to measure progress.

MODEL

An abstract representation that illustrates the components or relationships of a specified

application or module.

MODULE

A functional part of an application that is discrete and identifiable with a specific subject.

MODULE TESTING

The process of testing individual software modules or sets of related modules to verify

the implementation of the software.

MULTIUSER

Concurrent access to a single database by more than one user, usually through the use

of client workstations.

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Software Engineering Terms - L

LIFECYCLE

A set of software development activities, or stages that function together to guide the

development and maintenance of software products. Each stage is finite in scope,

requires a specific set of inputs, and produces a specific set of deliverables.

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Software Engineering Terms - K

KEY FIELD

A field used to identify a record or group of records by its value. See also primary key

and foreign key.

KEY PROCESS AREA

A software engineering process identified by the Software Engineering Institute Capability

Maturity Model that is an essential to an organization's ability to develop consistently

high-quality software products.

KILOBYTE (KB)

One thousand bytes (actually 1024 storage positions). Used as a measure of storage

capacity.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

The process of systematically managing and leveraging the stores of knowledge in an

organization. This knowledge is generally stored as sets of documents or database

records.

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Software Engineering Terms - J

JOIN

A database operation or command that links the rows or records of two or more tables by

one or more columns in each table.

JOINT APPLICATION DESIGN (JAD)

A design technique that brings users and IT professionals into a facilitated meeting for

the purpose of interactively designing an application.

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Software Engineering Terms - I

IMPLEMENTATION ELEMENTS

A specific software component created to fulfill a specific function defined in the

functional and system design documents.

IMPLEMENTATION STAGE

A stage in the software development lifecycle during which a software product is created

from the design specifications and testing is performed on the individual software units

produced. Also referred to as the programming stage.

INCREMENTAL DEVELOPMENT

A software development technique where multiple small software development lifecycles

are used to develop the overall software product in a modular fashion.

INDEX

A specialized data structure used to facilitate rapid access to individual database records

or groups of records.

INFORMATION

Data that has been shaped into a form that is meaningful and useful to humans.

INFORMATION SYSTEM

Interrelated components working together to collect, process, store, and disseminate

information to support decision-making, coordination, control, analysis, and/or

visualization in an organization.

INHERITANCE

A feature of object-oriented programming where a specific class of objects receives the

features of a more general class.

INITIAL DATA LOAD

When a new database application is first brought online, certain sets of data are

preloaded to support operations. In some cases, a large amount of data is transferred

from one or more legacy systems that the new database application is replacing. The

initial data load figure is calculated as the sum of all records in operational and support

data areas on day zero of the applications production lifecycle. This figure is used as a

baseline for estimating development effort, server hardware requirements and network

loads.

INNER QUERY

Synonym for sub query.

INSERTION POINT

The position of the cursor within a block of text.

INSPECTION

Also termed desk checking. A quality assurance technique that relies on visual

examination of developed products (usually source code or design documentation) to

detect errors, violation of development standards, and other problems.

INSTALLATION STAGE

A software lifecycle stage that consists of the testing, training, and conversion efforts

necessary to place the developed software application into production.

INTEGRITY

The degree to which a software component or application prevents unauthorized access

to, or modification of, programs or data.

INTEGER

A whole number, usually limited to a range of -32,000 to +32,000.

INTERFACE

A formal connection point defined between two independent applications for the purpose

of data exchange.

INTERFACE TESTING

A testing technique that evaluates whether software components pass data and control

correctly to one another.

INTERSECTION

A group of data elements included in two or more tables as part of a Join operation. 

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Software Engineering Terms - H

HARDWARE

Physical computer equipment and peripherals used to process, store, or transmit

software applications or data.

HIERARCHICAL MENU

A menu with multiple levels, consisting of a main Menubar that leads to one or more

levels of sub menus from which choices or actions are made.

HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE (HTML)

A programming tool that uses HyperText to establish dynamic links to other documents

stored in the same or remote computers.

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Software Engineering Terms - G

GROUP

During report generation, one or more records that are collected into a single category, usually for the purpose of totaling. Also used to identify a collection of database users with common access privileges. 

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