Software development process
- Explanation of the iterative nature of the software development process
- Description of the purposes of the software specification, and its status as a legal contract
- Explanation of the importance of each stage of the development process
- analysis
- design
- implementation
- testing
- documentation
- evaluation
- maintenance
- Identification of the personnel at each stage and brief description of their roles
- client
- systems analyst
- project manager
- programmer
- independent test group
- Description and exemplification of pseudocode and one graphical design notation (structure diagram or other suitable) including data flow
- Description and exemplification of top-down design and stepwise refinement
- Explanation of the need for systematic and comprehensive testing
- Explanation of the need for documentation at each stage
- Evaluation of software in terms of
- robustness
- reliability
- portability
- efficiency
- maintainability
- Description and exemplification of corrective, adaptive and perfective maintenance
Software development languages and environments
- Description and comparison of
- procedural
- declarative
- event-driven languages
- Comparison of the functions, uses and efficiency of
- compilers
- interpreters
- Description of the features and uses of scripting language (including creating and editing a macro)
- Explanation of the need for and benefits of scripting languages
- Description of the use of module libraries
High level programming language constructs
- Description and exemplification of the following constructs in pseudocode and an appropriate high level language:
- string operations (concatenation and substrings)
- formatting of I/O
- CASE (or equivalent multiple outcome selection)
- Description and exemplification of
- real
- integer
- boolean variables
- 1-D arrays
- Description and exemplification of
- procedures/subroutines/subprograms
- user-defined functions
- modularity
- parameter passing (in, out, in/out)
- call by reference/value
- local and global variables
- scope
Standard algorithms
- Description and exemplification of the following standard algorithms in pseudocode and an appropriate high level language:
- linear search
- counting occurrences
- finding min
- finding max
