Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T05:06:26.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAPTER 3 - LARGE-SCALE DEVELOPMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

Ari Jaaksi
Affiliation:
Nokia Telecommunications
Juha-Markus Aalto
Affiliation:
Nokia Telecommunications
Ari Aalto
Affiliation:
Nokia Telecommunications
Kimmo Vättö
Affiliation:
Nokia Telecommunications
Get access

Summary

Creating great software is hard, but it's even harder when you try to do it in a scope of a large system. The good news is programming tools and methods have improved; the bad news is the average size of a software system is growing all the time. Increasing competition in the software business has pushed the software houses to deliver more and more feature-rich systems that provide users with innovative user interface solutions and better capacity than the systems in the past. This push is evident in software development and the average size of software projects increases year after year.

We consider a software system to be large if its size exceeds 200,000 lines of code. Such systems have two characteristic properties that bring special flavor to their development. First, they are far more complex than single applications; second, they tend to be evolutionary by nature.

The complexity is often considered an inherent factor in any software development, but for a small exercises such as “Hello world” it is not the case. Complexity is when you are debugging a poorly structured distributed system with some dozens of thousands of classes. Systems that are developed for years as a series of consecutive system releases are called evolutionary systems. The development of new functionality is mostly carried out by modifying the existing design. An evolutionary system is not considered complete if there are new market needs to evolve it. The releases in the field are in maintenance phase but there are continuous development efforts on-going to create new releases on the basis of existing ones.

Type
Chapter
Information
Tried and True Object Development
Industry-Proven Approaches with UML
, pp. 185 - 262
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×