major areas of the application of the software

Software has become integral part of most of the fields of human life. We name a field and we find the usage of software in that field. Software applications are grouped in to eight areas for convenience

 (i) System software: Infrastructure software come under this category like compilers, operating systems, editors, drivers, etc. Basically system software is a collection of programs to provide service to other programs.

(ii) Real time software: These software are used to monitor, control and analyze real world events as they occur. An example may be software required for weather forcasting. Such software will gather and process the status of temperature, humidity and other environmental parameters to forcast the weather.

(iii) Embedded software: This type of software is placed in “Read-Only-Memory (ROM)” of the product and control the various functions of the product. The product could be an aircraft, automobile, security system, signalling system, control unit of power plants, etc. The embedded software handles hardware components and is also termed as intelligent software.

(iv) Business software: This is the largest application area. The software designed to process business applications is called business software. Business software could be payroll, file monitoring system, employee management, account management. It may also be a data warehousing tool which helps us to take decisions based on available data. Management information system, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and such other software are popular examples of business software.

(v) Personal computer software: The software used in personal computers are covered in this category. Examples are word processors, computer graphics, multimedia and animating tools, database management, computer games etc. This is a very upcoming area and many big organisations are concentrating their effort here due to large customer base.

(vi) Artificial intelligence software: Artificial Intelligence software makes use of nonnumerical

algorithms to solve complex problems that are not amenable to computation or straight forward analysis [PRESOI]. Examples are expert systems, artificial neural network, signal processing software etc.

(vii) Web based software: The software related to web applications come under this

category. Examples are CGI, HTML, Java, Perl, DHTML etc.

(viii) Engineering and scientific software: Scientific and engineering application software are grouped in this category. Huge computing is normally required to process data.

Examples are CAD/CAM package, SPSS, MATLAB, Engineering Pro, Circuit analyzers etc.

The expectations from software are increasing in modern civilisation. Software of any of the above groups, has a specialised role to play. Customers and development organisations are desiring more features which may not be always possible to provide. Another trend has emerged to provide source code to the customers and organisations so that they can make modifications for their needs. 

This trend is particularly visible in infrastructure software like data bases, operating systems, compilers etc. Software where source codes are available, are known as open source. Organisations can develop software applications around such source codes. Some of the examples of ‘‘open source software’’ are LINUX, MySQL, PHP, open office, Apache web server etc. 

Open source software has risen to great prominence. We may say that these are the programs whose licenses give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program without paying royalties to original developers. Whether open source software are better than proprietary software ? Answer is not easy. Both schools of thought are in the market. However, popularity of many open source software give confidence to every user. They may also help us to develop small business applications at low cost.