Date of Award

1998

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Communications, Health and Science

First Supervisor

Jean Hall

Abstract

Flexible software systems are designed to be able to adapt to changes in their environment without the need for programmer intervention. This allows companies and institutions to avoid the cost of hiring a programmer every time a business rule changes or a data structure is modified. The techniques of designing and implementing flexible 3GL software systems have been proven as a means of reducing the high cost of software maintenance caused by the changing of systems requirements. Such systems have been in operation in the European finance sector since the early 1980's. Edith Cowan University is participating in current research investigating the effectiveness of porting these techniques into the realm of modem 4GL environments such as Oracle. The explosion in popularity of the World Wide Web in recent years means that software developers will now be looking at the Web as the primary means of deployment for many of their applications. Web application developers will face the same high maintenance costs that have always plagued software developers. This study investigates the porting of techniques of software flexibility from 3GL and 4GL environments to the World Wide Well environment, and any benefits that this may bring to users and administrators of World Wide Web systems. This investigation involved the development of a flexible, Web-enabled system to allow unit coordinators at Edith Cowan University to manage access to Web-enabled unit materials. University staff were invited to comment on the usefulness of the flexibility of the system.

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