Development of software support tools for social work professionals

Abstract

The objective of this project was to identify the general needs of social work professionals and use the software engineering process to develop these much needed software support tools. The primary needs identified were storage and fast retrieval of data, inventory management, schedule management, and security. The Waterfall Model of software development was used throughout the project. A detailed requirements and design analysis were performed. Microsoft’s VB.,ET programming environment and Oracle’s MySQL database were chosen for the project. Unified Modeling Language's (UML) use cases, class diagrams, and relational model diagrams were used to aid in the development process. The process was documented following IBM's Rational Unified Process (RUP) documentation style. The source code was fully documented tested. The tests performed included configuration, performance, load, functional and database integrity testing. All the tests were successful in the sense that either no defects were found or the defects found were successfully removed. Key Terms - Social work, software development, software engineering, Waterfall Model.