Custom software development, also known as custom software engineering, defines omitting of predeveloped solutions and views. If a customer wants to put their ideas into practice, custom software development technologies are custom approaches to solving their problems. Finding new creative decisions in order to meet the specific requirements and preferences of the customer as quickly as possible may be achieved with custom software development.

A goal of custom software solutions may be to develop not for the mass auditorium / user, but rather developed to be unique, for a single customer / user or a group. Custom developed software may be designed in stage by stage processes, allowing all nuances and possible hidden dangers to be taken into account, including issues which were not mentioned in the specifications.

Pre-developed software packages, in most cases, may not be modifiable or customized to ones needs; and are usually available to all unrelated users or groups of users. For example, software designed for a cell phone manufacturer would be 'custom,' even though there could be thousands of individual users. Software written for use by many other manufacturers would be packaged, even if there were only a single user in each factory.

Software Development Companies Worldwide provide custom programming and software engineering services. Most of the companies have a wide experience in custom database programming, distributed website and web application development, etc.

Potential Problems

Underlying potential problems, risks and unavoidable costs may occur regarding custom software development. Custom developed software implies both high cost and high risk. When a customer purchases custom developed software, he might face the fact that there are some certain problems with installing the software and adopting it to that customer's needs and purposes. Sometimes it takes time to manage these issues, causing losses of time, efforts and money.

Software development is the translation of a user need or marketing goal into a software product. Software development is sometimes understood to encompass the processes of software engineering combined with the research and goals of software marketing to develop computer software products.

It is often difficult to isolate whether engineering or marketing is more responsible for the success or failure of a software product to satisfy customer expectations. This is why it is important to understand both processes and/or facilitate collaboration between both engineering and marketing in the total software development process. Engineering and marketing concerns are often balanced in the role of a project manager that may or may not use that title.

Because software development may involve compromising or going beyond what is required by the client, a software development project may stray into processes not usually associated with engineering such as market research, human resources, risk management, intellectual property, budgeting, crisis management, etc. These processes may also cause the role of business development to overlap with software development.

A software development process is a structure imposed on the development of a software product. Synonyms include software life cycle and software process. There are several models for such processes, each describing approaches to a variety of tasks or activities that take place during the process.

• Software development process
• Activities and steps
• Requirements, Architecture, Implementation, Testing, Deployment
• Models
• Agile, Cleanroom, Iterative, RAD, RUP, Spiral, Waterfall, XP
• Supporting disciplines
• Configuration management, Documentation, Project management, User experience design

1. Processes and meta-processes
2. Process models
3. Waterfall processes
4. Iterative processes
5. Formal methods

Processes and meta-processes

A growing body of software development organizations implement process methodologies. Many of them are in the defense industry, which in the U.S. requires a rating based on 'process models' to obtain contracts. The international standard for describing the method of selecting, implementing and monitoring the life cycle for software is ISO 12207.

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is one of the leading models. Independent assessments grade organizations on how well they follow their defined processes, not on the quality of those processes or the software produced. CMM is gradually replaced by CMMI. ISO 9000 describes standards for formally organizing processes with documentation.

ISO 15504, also known as Software Process Improvement Capability Determination (SPICE), is a "framework for the assessment of software processes". This standard is aimed at setting out a clear model for process comparison. SPICE is used much like CMM and CMMI. It models processes to manage, control, guide and monitor software development. This model is then used to measure what a development organization or project team actually does during software development.

Six Sigma is a methodology to manage process variations that uses data and statistical analysis to measure and improve a company's operational performance. It works by identifying and eliminating defects in manufacturing and service-related processes. The maximum permissible defects are 3.4 per one million opportunities. Six Sigma is more manufacturing-oriented and needs further research on its relevance to software development.

Domain Analysis

Often the first step in attempting to design a new piece of software, whether it is an addition to existing software, a new application, a new subsystem or a whole new system, is what is generally referred to as "Domain Analysis". Assuming that the developers are not sufficiently knowledgeable in the subject area of the new software, the first task is to investigate the so-called "domain" of the software. The more knowledgeable they are about the domain already, the less the work required. Another objective of this work is to make the analysts who will later try to elicit and gather the requirements from the area experts or professionals, speak with them in the domain's own terminology and to better understand what is being said. So, this phase is an important prelude to extracting and gathering the requirements.

Software Elements Analysis

The most important task in creating a software product is extracting the requirements. Customers typically know what they want, but not what software should do, while incomplete, ambiguous or contradictory requirements are recognized by skilled and experienced software engineers. Frequently demonstrating live code may help reduce the risk that the requirements are incorrect.

Specification

Specification is the task of precisely describing the software to be written, possibly in a rigorous way. In practice, most successful specifications are written to understand and fine-tune applications that were already well-developed, although safety-critical software systems are often carefully specified prior to application development. Specifications are most important for external interfaces that must remain stable.

Software architecture

The architecture of a software system refers to an abstract representation of that system. Architecture is concerned with making sure the software system will meet the requirements of the product, as well as ensuring that future requirements can be addressed. The architecture step also addresses interfaces between the software system and other software products, as well as the underlying hardware or the host operating system.

Implementation (or coding)

Reducing a design to code may be the most obvious part of the software engineering job, but it is not necessarily the largest portion.

Testing

Testing of parts of software, especially where code by two different engineers must work together falls to the software engineer.

Documentation

An important (and often overlooked) task is documenting the internal design of software for the purpose of future maintenance and enhancement. Documentation is most important for external interfaces.

Software Training and Support

A large percentage of software projects fail because developers fail to realize creating software won’t be implemented if nobody in an organization ends up using it. People are occasionally resistant to change and avoid venturing into an unfamiliar area so, as a part of the deployment phase, it is very important to have training classes for the most enthusiastic software users, shifting the training towards the neutral users intermixed with the avid supporters, and finally incorporate the rest of the organization into adopting the new software.

Maintenance

Maintaining and enhancing software to cope with newly discovered problems or new requirements can take far more time than the initial development of the software. Not only may it be necessary to add code that does not fit the original design but just determining how software works at some point after it is completed may require significant effort by a software engineer. About ? of all software engineering work is maintenance. A small part of that is fixing bugs. Most maintenance is extending systems to do new things, which in many ways can be considered new work.

Process models

A decades-long goal has been to find repeatable, predictable processes or methodologies that improve productivity and quality. Some try to systematize or formalize the task of writing software. Others apply project management techniques to writing software. Without project management, software projects can easily be delivered late or over budget. With large numbers of software projects not meeting their expectations in terms of functionality, cost, or delivery schedule, effective project management is proving difficult.

Waterfall processes

The best-known and oldest process is the waterfall model, where developers follow these steps in order:

1. state requirements
2. analyze requirements
3. design a solution approach
4. architect a software framework for that solution
5. develop code
6. Test (perhaps unit tests then system tests)
7. Deploy, and Post Implementation.

After each step is finished, the process proceeds to the next step.

There is a misconception that the process has no provision for correcting errors in early steps. In fact this is where the domain of requirements management comes in which includes change control.

This approach is used in high risk projects, particularly large defense contracts. Studies of the failure rate of the DOD-STD-2167 specification, which enforced waterfall, have shown that the more closely a project follows its process, specifically in up-front requirements gathering, the more likely the project is to release features that are not used in their current form.

More often too the supposed stages are part of joint review between customer and supplier, the supplier can, in fact, develop at risk and evolve the design but must sell off the design at a key milestone called Critical Design Review (CDR). This shifts engineering burdens from engineers to customers who may have other skills.

Iterative processes

Iterative development prescribes the construction of initially small but ever larger portions of a software project to help all those involved to uncover important issues early before problems or faulty assumptions can lead to disaster. Iterative processes are preferred by commercial developers because it allows a potential of reaching the design goals of a customer who does not know how to define what they want.

Agile software development processes are built on the foundation of iterative development. To that foundation they add a lighter, more people-centric viewpoint than traditional approaches. Agile processes use feedback, rather than planning, as their primary control mechanism. The feedback is driven by regular tests and releases of the evolving software.

Agile processes seem to be more efficient than older methodologies, using less programmer time to produce more functional, higher quality software [citation needed], but have the drawback from a business perspective that they do not provide long-term planning capability.

Extreme Programming, XP, is the best-known iterative process. In XP, the phases are carried out in extremely small (or "continuous") steps compared to the older, "batch" processes. The intentionally incomplete first pass through the steps might take a day or a week, rather than the months or years of each complete step in the Waterfall model. First, one writes automated tests, to provide concrete goals for development. Next is coding, which is complete when all the tests pass, and the programmers can't think of any more tests that are needed. Design and architecture emerge out of refactoring, and come after coding. Design is done by the same people who do the coding. Merging design and code - is common to all the other agile processes. The incomplete but functional system is.At this point, the practitioners start again on writing tests for the next most important part of the system.

While Iterative development approaches have their advantages, software architects are still faced with the challenge of creating a reliable foundation upon which to develop. Such a foundation often requires a fair amount of upfront analysis and prototyping to build a development model. The development model often relies upon specific design patterns and entity relationship diagrams (ERD). Without this upfront foundation, Iterative development can create long term challenges that are significant in terms of cost and quality.

Critics of iterative development approaches point out that these processes place what may be an unreasonable expectation upon the recipient of the software: that they must possess the skills and experience of a seasoned software developer .By analogy the critic argues that up-front design is as necessary for software development as it is for architecture. Indeed, in a sense conventional programming places more of this burden on the recipient, as the requirements and planning phases take place entirely before the development begins and testing only occurs after development is officially over.

In fact, a relatively quiet turn around in the Agile community has occurred on the notion of "evolving" the software without the requirements locked down.

These approaches have been developed along with web based technologies. As such, they are actually more akin to maintenance life cycles given that most of the architecture and capability of the solutions is embodied within the technology selected as the back bone of the application.

Refactoring is claimed, by the Agile community, as their alternative to cogitating and documenting a design. No equivalent claim is made of re-engineering - which is an artifact of the wrong technology being chosen, therefore the wrong architecture. Note the heavy emphasis here on constant reverse engineering by programming staff rather than managing a central design.

Test Driven Development (TDD) is a useful output of the Agile camp but raises a conundrum. TDD requires that a unit test be written for a class before the class is written. Therefore, the class firstly has to be "discovered" and secondly defined in sufficient detail to allow the write-test-once-and-code-until-class-passes model that TDD actually uses. This is actually counter to Agile approaches, particularly (so-called) Agile Modeling, where developers are still encouraged to code early, with light design. Obviously to get the claimed benefits of TDD a full design down to class and responsibilities is necessary. This counts towards iterative development, with a design locked down, but not iterative design - as heavy refactoring and re-engineering negate the usefulness of TDD.

Formal methods

Formal methods are mathematical approaches to solving software (and hardware) problems at the requirements, specification and design levels. Examples of formal methods include the B-Method, Petri nets, RAISE and VDM. Various formal specification notations are available, such as the Z notation.

Finite state machine (FSM) based methodologies allow executable software specification and by-passing of conventional coding.

Formal methods are most likely to be applied in avionics software, particularly where the software is safety critical. Software safety assurance standards, such as DO 178B demand formal methods at the highest level of categorization (Level A).

Formalization of software development is creeping in, in other places, with the application of OCL (and specializations such as JML) and especially with MDA allowing execution of designs, if not specifications.

Another emerging trend in software development is to write a specification in some form of logic (usually a variation of FOL), and then to directly execute the logic as though it were a program. The OWL language, based on Description Logic, is an example. There is also work on mapping some version of English (or another natural language) automatically to and from logic, and executing the logic directly. Examples are Attempt Controlled English, and Internet Business Logic, which does not seek to control the vocabulary or syntax. A feature of systems that support bidirectional English-logic mapping and direct execution of the logic is that they can be made to explain their results, in English, at the business or scientific level.

Web application development is the process and practice of developing web applications.

Contents

1. Risk
2. Technologies
3. Lifecycle Model
4. Testing
5. Tools
6. Frameworks and Reuse

Risk

Just as with a traditional desktop application, web applications have varying levels of risk. A personal home page is much less risky than, for example, a stock trading web site. For some projects security, software bugs, etc. are major issues. If time to market or technical complexity is a concern, documentation, test planning, change control, requirements analysis, architectural description and formal design and construction practices can mitigate risk.

Technologies

• Ajax
• ASP
• ASP.NET
• CSS
• Cold Fusion
• Java EE
• JavaScript
• Perl
• PHP
• Ruby, including Ruby on Rails
• CGI
• ISAPI/NSAPI

Lifecycle Model

Time to market, company-growth and requirements churn, three things that are emphasized in web-based business, coincide with the principles of the Agile practices. Some agile lifecycle models are:

• Extreme Programming
• Scrum
• Timebox development
• Feature Driven Development

Testing

Like traditional desktop applications, web applications undergo the same unit, integration and system testing. But because web application clients vary so greatly, teams might perform some additional testing, such as:

• Security
• Performance, Load, and Stress
• HTML/CSS validation
• Accessibility
• Usability

Many types of tests are automatable. At the component level, one of the xUnit packages can be a helpful tool. Or an organization can create its own unit testing framework. At the GUI level, Watir is useful.

Tools

In the case of ASP.NET, a developer can use Microsoft Visual Studio to write code. But, as with most other programming languages, he/she can also use a text editor. Notepad++ is an example.

For PHP, the Zend Development Environment provides numerous debugging tools and provides a rich feature set to make a PHP developer's life easier.

Several code generation tools such as dbQwikSite are available to automate the development of code. Using such tools, non-technical users can produce working code, and experienced coders can accelerate the development cycle.

Other tools include various browsers, FTP clients, etc.

Frameworks and Reuse

Practicing code reuse and using web application frameworks can greatly improve both productivity and time to market (McConnell 1996:537). Reusing externally developed components can allow an organization to reap the above benefits, while potentially saving money. However, for smaller components, it might be just as easy to develop your own components as it would be to learn new APIs. Also, if a component is essential to the business, an organization might want to control its development.

Web development is a broad term for any activities related to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet. This can include e-commerce business development, web design, web content development, client-side/server-side coding, and web server configuration. However, among web professionals, "web development" usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building web sites, e.g. writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.

For larger businesses and organizations, web development teams can consist of hundreds of people. Smaller organizations may only require a single permanent or contracting webmaster, or secondary assignment to related job positions such as a graphic designer and/or Information systems technician. Web development may be a collaborative effort between departments rather than the domain of a designated department.

Web development as an industry

Since the mid-1990s, web development has been one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In 1995 there were fewer than 10,000 web development companies in the United States alone and in 2005 there are over 30,000 such companies. The web development industry is expected to grow over 20% by 2010. The growth of this industry is being pushed by large businesses wishing to sell products and services to their customers and to automate business workflow, as well as the growth of many small web design and development companies.

In addition, cost of Web site development and hosting has dropped dramatically during this time. Instead of costing tens of thousands of dollars, as was the case for early websites, one can now develop a simple web site for less than a thousand dollars, depending on the complexity and amount of content. Smaller Web site development companies are now able to make web design accessible to both smaller companies and individuals further fueling the growth of the web development industry. As far as web development tools and platforms are concerned, there are many systems available to the public free of charge to aid in development. A popular example is the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), which is usually distributed free of charge. This fact alone has manifested into many people around the globe setting up new Web sites daily and thus contributing to increase in web development popularity. Another contributing factor has been the rise of easy to use WYSIWYG web development software, most prominently Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver. Using such software, virtually anyone can develop a Web page in a matter of minutes. Knowledge of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), or other programming languages is not required, but recommended for professional results.

The next generation of web development tools uses the strong growth in LAMP and Microsoft .NET technologies to provide the Web as a way to run applications online. Web developers now help to deliver applications as Web services which were traditionally only available as applications on a desk based computer.

Instead of running executable code on a local computer, users are interacting with online applications to create new content. This has created new methods in communication and allowed for many opportunities to decentralize information and media distribution. Users are now able to interact with applications from many locations, instead of being tied to a specific workstation for their application environment.

Another good example of transformative communication led by web development is the blog. Web applications such as WordPress and b2evolution have created easily implemented blog environments for individual Web sites. Open source content systems such as Typo3, Xoops, Joomla, and Drupal have extended web development into new modes of interaction and communication.

Typical Areas

Web Development can be split into many areas and a typical and basic web development hierarchy might consist of:

• Client Side Coding
• CSS
• XHTML (in accordance to modern web design standards, XHTML's use is replacing the older HTML)
• Javascript
• Server Side Coding
• PHP and MySQL
• ASP and MSSQL
• ASP.NET and MSSQL
• CGI and/or Perl
• Java, e.g. J2EE or WebObjects
• Ruby, e.g. Ruby on Rails
• ColdFusion

In practice, many web developers will also have interdisciplinary skills / roles, including:

• Graphic design / web design
• Information architecture and copywriting/copyediting with web usability, accessibility and search engine optimization in mind
• Project management, QA and other aspects common to IT development in general.

The above list is a simple website development hierarchy and can be extended to include all client side and server side aspects. It is still important to remember that web development is generally split up into client side coding covering aspects such as the layout and design, then server side coding, which covers the website's functionality and back end systems.

Looking at these items from an "umbrella approach", client side coding such as XHTML is executed and stored on a local client (in a web browser) whereas server side code is not available to a client and is executed on a web server which generates the appropriate XHTML which is then sent to the client. As the nature of client side coding allows you to alter the HTML on a local client and refresh the pages with updated content (locally), web designers must bear in mind the importance and relevance to security with their server side scripts. If a server side script accepts content from a locally modified client side script, the web development of that page shows poor sanitization with relation to security.

Security

Web development takes into account a lot of things, such as data entry error checking through forms, as well as sanitization of the data that is entered in those fields. Malicious practices such as SQL injection can be executed through users with ill intent yet only primitive knowledge of web development as a whole. Not only this, but scripts can be exploited to grant unauthorized access to the hacker to gain information such as email addresses, passwords and protected content.

Some of this is dependent on the server environment (most commonly Apache or Microsoft IIS) on which the scripting language, such as PHP, Ruby or ASP is running, and therefore is not necessarily down to the web developer themselves to maintain. However, stringent testing of web applications before public release is encouraged to prevent such exploits from occurring.

We provide a full range of Software Development services. We specialize in custom business solutions, application development, database design, and web-enabling businesses. Our cross-platform, technology-independent approach guarantees you the highest performing, cost beneficial result. We have a commitment to quality, service, and customer satisfaction.

We have Core Development Expertise in:

• Custom Business Software Solutions
• Database Design
• Application Development
• Search Engines
• Website Design and Development
• Mobile Applications
• Embedded Systems and Firmware
• Hardware Design

Platforms

Windows (all), Linux, UNIX, Java ME, MacOS X

Databases

Microsoft SQL Server , MySQL, PostgeSQL,Oracle, MicroSoft Access, Firebird, Ingres, FoxPro, dBase

Languages

ASP.NET, AJAX ,PHP , Flash ActionScript, Adobe Flex 2 ,HTML, DHML, XML, Java, JavaScript ,Ruby on Rails ,C, C++ Assembler, Cobol, Fortran, dBase

We can support and provide solutions in the following:

• E-commerce
• Order Management and Fulfillment
• Configuration Management
• Inventory Management
• Production/process control
• User/Employee Management
• Business Information Management
• Data Warehousing

We understand and define your business processes, search out opportunities for increased efficiency and communication, and automate, integrate, and align business units with corporate objectives.

During the initial exploration process, we focus on short-term objectives, process improvements, and ROI targets.

We always recommend the technology that will provide you the best performance and flexibility for the lowest cost. We believe that the true value of any technology is in the benefits realized by your business through its specific application, not the technology itself.