Software Design and Development
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Transcript Software Design and Development
Computing Science
Information Systems Design and
Development
Purpose, features and functionality
Learning Outcomes
• By the end of this topic you will be able to:
• explain why it is necessary to have a detailed
description of purpose for an information
system;
• describe the different types of users that may
use an information system;
• explain why it is important that information
systems can interact with other software.
Purpose of an information system
• We are looking at two types of information
system
• Databases
• Websites
• Information systems should allow the
following
Purpose of an information system
Information systems should allow the following
•Multi-access
•Fast access to information
•Information to be sorted by different criteria
•Information to be presented in different formats
•Information to be inserted, deleted or amended.
Purpose of an information system
Information systems should have a detailed description of their
purpose to allow users to decide the usefulness of the system
The description could include
• What information is to be stored
• Why the information is to be stored
• How the information is to be stored
• How the information will be used
• Who will be using the information system.
Types of user
Important to determine what type of user will
use the system
Two main questions to determine
– What is the age range of the target audience?
– What is the experience level of the target
audience?
Software interaction
• Increasingly important that information
systems can interact with other software
without human intervention
• Design of information systems is increasingly
influenced by the need for these interactions
Software interactions
Example 1 – Search engines on WWW
• Search engines work by automatically creating
a database that links words and phrases to
web addresses
• Done by software called web crawlers which
scans HTML to pick out components
• Originally done by searching metadata
contained in <head> area of web pages
Software interactions
Example 1 – Search engines on WWW
• Google (and other search engines) analyse links
to sites with sites with the best links being rated
highly
• Search engine optimisation is the name for
creating web pages in such a way that places the
pages highly in search engine results
• Search engines like Google and Bing now keep
their methods of rating sites secret to stop
manipulation of search results
Software interactions
Example 2 Aggregating sites
• These are sites that gather information from
other sites
• Examples are Expedia, CompareThe Market
and GoCompare
• They collect information about, for example,
holidays from multiple sites and display it on a
single, searchable web site
Software interactions
Example 2 Aggregating sites
• If someone buys through the aggregate site
then the company selling the product will pay
a small sum to the aggregate site.
• The aggregate sites are made possible by
companies agreeing standards to create their
sites. This allows the aggregate site to
automatically gather the data needed