We all know that Microsoft servers and languages are the most common applications used these days, around the world. Why is that? Because, we all heard about them, and more, almost anyone of us uses them.

When we hear about Microsoft, we always think about innovative, best quality products and services ever. Microsoft creates products for executives or students, amateurs or professionals, office or home. There are millions of people using Microsoft products, as they are the most popular and validated ones, by anyone using them.

Microsoft Servers – “Windows Small Business” server

Since it launched its servers, known, as well, as Windows Servers, it monopolized the IT services market. There are enterprises using the Microsoft server named “Windows Small Business” for both intranet and internet access. This server features applications that perfectly integrate with any activities. Its “Premium” edition, presenting an improved edition of “Server 2003”, completes the IT demands in any minor business and it is compatible with any Microsoft software. The “Windows Small Business” features:

• Internet shared access
• Access to outlook web and web workplace
• Firewall protection for local network
• Windows application for internal website that allows you to share information with co-workers
• Access to e-mail, schedule, task information, calendar
• Wireless option for different gadgets and cell phones
• Effectiveness of network through administration tools

Reasons to Use Microsoft Languages

Microsoft languages are most applicable programs used in the IT world. They represent the basic language utilize to create complex program. There are five reasons why you should use Microsoft languages as follows:

• These languages are faster then other programming languages applications. Unlike other programming languages brands, these ones do not create interpreted files, so they do not need an intermediary device to compile information and execute commands, and this way, the processing time is much shorter.
• They are the most known programming languages used these days.
• These languages help you to improve your OOP skill (object-oriented programming). For any programmer, this is an important aspect in developing an interactive and flexible application.
• Systems are usually created with these Microsoft languages. As an example, Linux code uses type “C”, which is a low-level language and it does not provide a very flexible program.
• This characteristic is valid for both Microsoft servers and languages, as they are the best solutions for any large projects. The languages are the ones combining high-level with low-level languages, strings and characters, while servers offer the programming platforms.

Microsoft Servers and Languages – type SQL

The “Structured Query Languages” (SQL) are there to create, modify and update the database access and structure. SQL server is related to an algebra equation and the languages it uses are ANSI SQL and T-SQL.

The Microsoft servers and languages are the best ones responding to any demands and have been introduced in a variety of editions respecting consumer’s requests. These editions include features as enterprise, developer, evaluation, fast track and more. As well, they already contain useful files and this way, help users to save space on their hard drivers. As well, they are compatible with all kind of programs and if not, they usually come, pre-installed, with options that help us to get the necessary compatibility.

It is obvious that Microsoft servers and languages are the best ones from all existing on the market. As well, we all know that using them, we have “no other choice” but to collect the effectiveness of our work, as any other professional.

The term Product Development is referred to the process of bringing new products to the market. The process includes design, creation and marketing of the product.

Product Development Process

The steps for the product development process are as follows:

1. Getting the Perfect Idea- The first step for developing a product is getting the perfect idea. Ideas can be gained from marketing analysis, competitor moves, employees, salespersons etc.
2. Screening the Idea- The purpose of idea screening is to eliminate the weak ideas before giving resources to them. The area of concern in this step  are- industry sales, market trends, expected or current competitive pressure, technical feasibility of the product and profitability of the product after manufacturing and deliver it to the customer.
3. Requirement Definition- This phase deals with the requirements that are needed to develop the product. Requirement definition is one of the important phases because the next phases are dependent on requirement definition. The better the definition, the easier is to complete the process without time and money. The areas of concern of this phase are the real buyers, customer’s specification, cost of the product etc.
4. Concept Development- Developing the concept means dealing with marketing and engineering analysis. The issues that are dealt in this phase are- essential product features, benefits that can be gained from the product, cost effectiveness of the product, consumer’s reaction and many more.
5. Business Analysis- This phase deals with the business environment like estimating the selling price based on customer feedback and competition, estimating sales volume and estimating “break even point” and profitability.
6. Prototyping- Prototyping means creating a small scale working sample of the product. Prototypes can be either mock-ups or fabricated. Prototyping has the following advantages:

¡  Helps to understand any misunderstanding between the customer and the developer.

¡  Helps to identify missing customer requirements.

¡  Advance testing of the product.

1. Testing- Testing includes beta testing and market testing. Testing is done on the prototype model. Testing is done to check if the product responds in the desired way or not. Adjustments can be made where necessary during testing.
2. Implementation- Implementation means putting the product into practical use. The tasks carried out in this phase are-

¡  Initiating new program.

¡  Managing and controlling the quality of the product.

¡  Publishing technical communications for example, data sheets.

¡  Product review and monitoring.

1. Production- Product is concerned with the following:

¡  Launching the product.

¡  Marketing the product through advertisements and other promotions.

¡  Acquiring the critical path.

1. New Product Pricing- Value analysis, cost of the product, alternative competitive technologies, forecast of profit, revenue etc. are all the factors that are dealt in this phase.

Companies’ Point of View to the Product Development

There are many companies that extend their services to support the product development professionals. Product Development Management Association (PDMA) and Product Development Institute (PDI) are such organizations. Organizations see the product development as the first step towards generalizing and commercializing new products.

Testing is a process consisting of subjecting a program to a set test inputs and observing if the program behaves as expected. If the program fails to behave as expected then the conditions for which failure occurs are noted for later debugging and correction.

Objectives of Software Testing

1. The main objective of software testing is to find an error.
2. A good test case should be able to find an undiscovered error.

Verification and Validation

Software testing is very much related with verification and validation. Verification refers to the set of activities that ensures that the software correctly implements a specific function. Validation refers to the set of activities that ensures that the software has been built is traceable to customer requirements. Thus while verification is concerned in building the product up to the specification, validation is concerned in building the product that customer wants.

Types of Software Testing

Software testing can be classified into two categories- black box testing and white box testing.

• Black Box Testing- Black box testing normally determines the quality of the software. Black box testing checks the functional requirements. It checks the input data and output data of the requirements. The result of the testing is determined by observing the outputs to the corresponding inputs.

• White Box Testing- White box testing is used to check the internal structure of a program. It uses control structures to drive test cases. The tester should have a thorough knowledge of the program or software to carry out this testing efficiently.

Levels of Testing

• Unit Testing- Unit testing refers to the test of a module or segment of code. Unit testing uses the method of white box testing.

• Integration Testing- Integration testing is concerned with verification and program construction. Integration testing exposes the errors in the interfaces and interaction between modules.

• System Testing- System testing tests a whole system to check that if it has met its requirement specification or not. System testing is consists of three types of testing strategies. These are:

• Alpha Testing- Alpha testing is the first stage of system testing and is carried out by the members of the development team.
• Beta Testing- After alpha testing, beta testing is executed. Beta testing is performed to check whether the developed software meets its user requirements.
• Acceptance Testing- The third and the last stage, called acceptance testing is performed by the customer to determine whether to accept or reject the delivery of the system.

Software Maintenance

After software testing comes software maintenance. Software maintenance is the process of retaining the value of the software and improving the quality of the software. Software maintenance can be of four types. These are –

• Corrective Maintenance- It is used to correct the problems after delivery of the product.
• Adaptive Maintenance- It is used maintain the software product in a changing environment.
• Perfective Maintenance- It is used to improve the performance of the software.
• Preventive Maintenance- It is used to detect and correct errors in a software before they becomes effective.

Software development has been defined as the process of analyzing needs, designing solutions, writing programs, testing them, and implementing them to solve problems for individuals and organizations. Over the years different models have been used in software development (software development lifecycles, SDLC). Some of these are Waterfall, Spiral, Iterative or incremental and Agile.

Agile software Development is the model that is increasingly being used by developers these days, Ambler(n.d.) defines it as “An iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams within an effective governance framework with “just enough” ceremony that produces high quality software in a cost effective and timely manner  which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.” The values that are embedded in this model are: giving precedence to Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a plan.

Service oriented architecture (SOA) can improve the agility of business operations. Developers create services in the service layer, which have published interfaces supporting a particular business domain. Using the SOA approach in combination with component based approach to software development; companies can reap a lot of benefits. Some of these benefits might include: Better return on investment, mobility of code, focused developer roles as applications will have multiple layers and each layer would need a specific developer role (e.g. A client developer would need to know technologies such as SWING, JSP or MFC), higher security level, better testing leading to fewer defects, reusability, support for multiple client types, better scalability etc (Stevens,n.d.).

Cloud computing is another technology that has excited the tech world. Experts believe that cloud computing can provide a lot of benefits to testing and development of software. Cloud Computing can be defined as anything that involves delivering hosting services over the internet. This includes many areas of technology like software as a service, hardware as a service etc. One of the main advantages of cloud computing is that the provider hosts the software on the internet and the customer access only that which is needed and pays for that part.  Examples of companies providing software on demand are Salesforce.com (CRM), Google (GOOG), NetSuite (N), Taleo (TLEO), Concur Technologies (CNQR) etc.

Virtualization is being increasingly used by software developers to stream the development process. They use these tools to provide different target environments for development and testing for e.g., using different operating system, operating system versions and browsers. One of the main advantages is that developers can spend time on the actual testing rather than wasting time on creating and setting up test environments. One of the tools being used by Microsoft for this purpose is Microsoft Hyper-V.

The trend of Open Source Software development is also increasing as opposed to proprietary software. With Open Source code the software must be available for free and anyone should be able to download the source code. Being easily available makes it easy to modify the source code and make it adaptable to changing environments; this also makes the software more sustainable. Non-reliance on one entity also makes it feasible for the software to be modified by another party if the original developers abandon it. For open source code, developers are moving towards the usage of dynamic languages like JavaScript and PHP and relying less on static languages like C, C++ and Java. These languages are more flexible and easier to write in. Better software development and unit testing procedures have made the use of dynamic languages easier.

Reference List

Ambler S.W., (n.d.). Disciplined Agile Software Development: Definition. Retrieved August 23, 2009 from http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileSoftwareDevelopment.htm

Ambler S.W., (n.d.). Examining the Agile Manifesto. Retrieved August 23, 2009 from http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileSoftwareDevelopment.htm

SearchCloudComputing.com.(2009).Defintion. Retrieved August 23, 2009 from http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid201_gci1287881,00.html

Stevens,M.,.(n.d.). The Benefits of a Service-Oriented Architecture.Retrieved August 23, 2009 from http://www.developer.com/tech/article.php/1041191

UAE Hosting.(2009).Advantages of cloud computing. Retrieved August 23, 2009 from http://contactdubai.com/webhosting/advantages-of-cloud-computing

Gonzalez-Barahona ,J.M.(2000).Advantages of open source software. Retrieved August 23, 2009 from http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Advantages_open_source_soft.html