August
1997 QUESTION 5 Total Marks: 20 Marks |
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| 5. | (a) Why is the Preliminary Investigation phase considered to be a crucial stage in a system development project? | [2] | |
| (b) Describe the competitive advantage that a stock-monitoring computer system would provide to a supermarket. | [4] | ||
| (c) Explain, with the aid of an example in each case, the factors to be considered in defining the scope and constraints of a system. | [6] | ||
| (d) A user may think that a system is needed to perform certain functions. However, further thought and analysis may identify additional or different functions that are required. Systems have diverse users with different needs and any set of requirements is inevitably a compromise. | [8] | ||
| Show how the following four requirements could be rewritten to make them more precise, less ambiguous, and thus more easily validated. | |||
| 1. If the system should fail in operation, there should be minimal loss of data. | |||
| 2. The system interface should use a character set as available on a standard terminal. | |||
| 3. The software must be developed in such a way that it can be used by inexperienced users. | |||
| 4. All run-time errors should be caught. | |||