Software Engineering Glossary

"Q" Glossary Content



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Other topics within the glossary:

QA
Acronym for quality assurance.
QC
Acronym for quality control.

qualification

The process of determining whether a system or component is suitable for operational use.

qualification testing

Testing conducted to determine whether a system or component is suitable for operational use. See also: acceptance testing; development testing; operational testing.

quality

  1. The degree to which a system, component, or process meets specified requirements.
  2. The degree to which a system, component, or process meets customer or user needs or expectations.

quality assurance (QA)

  1. A planned and systematic pattern of all actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that an item or product conforms to established technical requirements.
  2. A set of activities designed to evaluate the process by which products are developed or manufactured. Contrast with: quality control.
See: software quality assurance.

quality attribute

A feature or characteristic that affects an item's quality. Syn: quality factor. Note: In a hierarchy of quality attributes, higher level attributes may be called quality factors, lower level attributes called quality attributes.

quality control (QC)

Note: This term has no standardized meaning in software engineering at this time. Candidate definitions are:
  1. A set of activities designed to evaluate the quality of developed or manufactured products. Contrast with: quality assurance (2).
  2. The process of verifying one's own work or that of a co-worker.
  3. Synonym for quality assurance.

quality factor

See: quality attribute. Note: In a hierarchy of quality attributes, higher level attributes may be called quality factors, lower level attributes called quality attributes

quality metric

  1. A quantitative measure of the degree to which an item possesses a given quality attribute.
  2. A function whose inputs are software data and whose output is a single numerical value that can be interpreted as the degree to which the software possesses a given quality attribute.

quantitative control

Any quantitative or statistically-based technique appropriate to analyze a software process, identify special causes of variations in the performance of the software process, and bring the performance of the software process within well-defined limits.

query language

A language used to access information stored in a database. Contrast with: programming language; specification language.

queue

A list in which items are appended to the last position of the list and retrieved from the first position of the list.

quick format

Formats a disk by deleting the file allocation table and root directory but not scanning the disk for bad areas.

quiescing

The process of bringing a device or system to a halt by rejecting new requests for work.