OPF Glossary - I

identification
(1) a user-oriented security quality requirement specifying the extent to which an application or component shall identify clients (e.g., users and client applications) before allowing them to use it.
(2) a quality factor measuring the extent to which an application or component actually identifies clients (e.g., users and client applications) before allowing them to use it.
Contrast with authentication and authorization.
immunity
(1) a user-oriented security quality requirement specifying the degree to which an application or component shall protect itself from infection by unauthorized undesirable programs (e.g., computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses).
(2) a quality factor measuring the degree to which an application or component actually prevents its infection by unauthorized introduction of undesirable programs.
(3) a security mechanism for protecting an application or component from infection by unauthorized introduction of undesirable programs (e.g., virus detection, analysis, and removal).
implementation
the activity consisting of the cohesive collection of all tasks that are primarily performed to build or acquire the application's individual components based on the application's architecture and design.
implementation languages
a language use to implement a software work product.
implementation work product
the set of all work products that are produced during the implementation activity.
Contrast with architecture set, configuration management set, deployment set, design set, implementation set, management set, process set, requirements set, and test set.
incremental
a property of a development process whereby units of work are repeated to produce additional new work products or capabilities of work products. Development cycles are typically incremental because applications are too large and complex to be built all at once in a big bang fashion.
Contrast with iterative.
independent test team
the team that performs most of system and launch testing independently from the teams that developed the application.
informational constraint
an architectural or design decision regarding a data component (content) that is to be treated as a requirement and therefore will constrain the architecture and design.
informational requirement
a requirement primarily concerning visible data components (e.g., a website’s content).
Examples include requirements concerning:
Contrast with design constraint, external API requirement, operational requirement, quality requirement.
information architect
the role that is played by a person who produces the information architecture of an application’s data components.
Contrast with business architect, database architect, hardware architect, security architect, software architect, and system architect.
information architecting
the architecting activity during which the application's information architecture is produced
information architecture
the architecture of an application’s data components (content).
information architecture document
the architecture work product produced during application development that documents the architecture of the application's major data components.
inheritance
the incremental construction of a new definition (e.g., class, type) in terms of existing definitions without disturbing the original defintions and their clients. Inheritance is most often used to implement "a kind of" relationships and polymorphism.
initiation phase
the first phase, during which the application's initial vision, partial requirements, and partial architecture are captured so that the application scope and cost can be estimated.
Contrast with construction phase, delivery phase, retirement phase, and usage phase.
input device
a device for inputing information and commands into a computer system.
inspection
a relatively formal verification and validation technique whereby one or more inspectors use an inspection checklist to identify defects in one or more related work products.
Contrast with audit, review, and walkthrough.
inspection checklist
a checklist of questions specific to a single kind of work product and that is used during an inspection to ensure that the inspectors have considered all significant potential defects.
inspection report
the quality engineering work product that is produced by an individual inspector during an inspection.
inspection summary report
the quality engineering work product that summarizes the most important findings of an inspection.
inspector
the role played by a person who evaluates a work product during an inspection.
installability
(1) a developer-oriented quality requirement specifying the ease with which an application or component shall be able to be successfully installed.
(2) a quality factor measuring the ease with which an application or component can be successfully installed, typically measured in terms of the average amount of person-hours required for a trained operator or hardware engineer to perform the installation.
installation manual
the deployment work product that provides procedures for installing and configuring the application in such production environments as data centers and hosting services.
instantiation guideline
a process framework guideline for selecting process components from an existing class library of such components to meet the needs of a specific project.
integrated development environment
a development environment in which the tools have been integrated to collaborate with each other (e.g., the output of one tool can be used as the input to another tool).
integration
the activity consisting of the cohesive collection of all tasks that are primarily performed to connect the application's components into an executing version of the application.
Note that software integration typically consists of coupling together multiple interfacing software components using inheritance, aggregation, and message passing.
Note that system integration typically consists of connecting hardware components and deploying software components to hardware components.
integration engineer (a.k.a., build master)
the role that is played when a person integrates the data, hardware, and software components of one or more applications.
integration environment
the complete integrated set of hardware and associated software tools that is used by the integration team to incrementally and iteratively integrate the components of an application.
Contrast with development environment, production environment, reuse environment, and test environment.
integration plan
the integration work product that documents the project's plans for integrating the components of the application.
integration server
a server computer used to support enterprise application integration (EAI), typically by acting as a go-between between application servers and legacy applications and databases.
integration team
the team that integrates the components of the application.
integration testing
the testing of a partially integrated application to cause failures resulting from defects involving the interaction of tested components.
integration work product
the cohesive set containing the work products that may be produced during the integration activity.
integrity
(1) a user-oriented security quality requirement specifying the degree to which an application or component shall ensure that its data and communications are not intentionally corrupted via unauthorized creation, modification, or deletion.
(2) a quality factor measuring the degree to which an application or component actually prevents the intentional unauthorized corruption of its data and communications.
interaction
a part of a use case path consisting of a single communication between an external and an application.
interface
any named boundary across which two or more separate elements (e.g., classes, components, hardware devices, subsystems, systems) interact (e.g., service requests with potential exceptions raised, physical connections) with each other.
interface architecture
any architecture TBD.
interface specification
any documentation of the public information about an interface that the developer of an element that uses the interface needs to know in order to ensure that the element correctly and effectively uses the interface.
interface languages
a language use to software interfaces.
internationalization
(1) a user-oriented configurability quality requirement specifying the degree to which an application or component shall be configurable to function appropriately in a global environment including support for national differences in:
(2) a quality factor measuring the degree to which an application or component is actually configured to function appropriately in a global environment.
Contrast with functional variants and personalization.
internationalization engineer
the role that is played when a person engineers an application or component to meet its internationalization requirements and thereby work properly in the associated countries.
internal build
a build that does not result in a version of the application being delivered by the development organization to the customer organization. Internal builds are used internally by the development organization to help manage iterative and incremental development.
Contrast with release.
Internet
the world's largest public network of networks on which the World Wide Web is based.
Contrast with intranet.
interoperability
(1) a user-oriented quality requirement specifying the degree to which an application or component shall be able to be successfully integrate with other specified applications or components (e.g., browsers, legacy databases, legacy applications, external systems, and required COTS components).
(2) a quality factor measuring the degree to which an application or component actually was able to be successfully integrated with other specified applications or components.
Note that: Contrast with portability.
intranet
a self-contained corporate or organizational network that is based on Internet technology and protocols, but is not connected to the Internet.
intrusion detection
a security requirement specifying the degree to which an application must ensure attempted access or modification by unauthorized individuals is detected and properly handled.
invariant
an assertion that must be true both before and after the execution of each operation (e.g., application use case, class method).
See also postcondition and precondition.
iteration
the repetition of a work unit on an existing work product to improve it (e.g., to fix defects and adapt it to changes in requirements).
iterative
a property of a development process whereby work units are repeated on existing work products to improve them (e.g., to fix defects and adapt it to changes in requirements).
Contrast with incremental.