Software Engineering Glossary

"W" Glossary Content



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Other topics within the glossary:

waiver
A written authorization to accept a configuration item or other designated item which, during production or after having been submitted for inspection, is found to depart from specified requirements, but is nevertheless considered suitable for use as is or after rework by an approved method. See also: configuration control; training waiver. Contrast with: deviation; engineering change.
walkthrough
A review process in which a designer or programmer leads one or more other members of the development team through a segment of design or code that he or she has written, while the other members ask questions and make comments about technique, style, possible errors, violation of development standards, and other problems. Contrast with: inspections.
wallpaper
A picture or drawing stored as a bitmap file (a file that has a .BMP extension) that you can select for the background of your desktop. Bitmaps can be simple drawings or elaborate scanned photographs.
warning beep
The sound that your computer makes when you encounter an error or try to perform a task that Windows does not recognize.
waterfall model
A model of the software development process in which the constituent activities, typically in concept phase, implementation phase, test phase, and installation and checkout phase, are performed in that order, possibly with overlap but with little or no iteration. Contrast with: incremental development; rapid prototyping; spiral model.
wear-out-failure period
The period in the life cycle of a system or component during which hardware failures occur at an increasing rate due to deterioration. Contrast with: constant-failure period; early-failure period. See also: bathtub curve.
well-defined process
A process that includes readiness criteria, inputs, standards and procedures for performing the work, verification mechanisms (such as peer reviews), outputs, and completion criteria. See also: effective process.
WHILE
A single-entry, single-exit loop in which the loop control is executed before the loop body. Syn: pre-tested iteration. Contrast with: closed loop; UNTIL. See also: leading decision.
white box
See: glass box
white-box testing
See: structural testing
wildcard
A character that represents any character or group of characters that might match the same position in other filenames. The question mark (?) wildcard can be used to represent any single character, and the asterisk (*) wildcard can be used to represent more than one character. For example, *.EXE represents all files that end with the .EXE filename extension.
window
A rectangular area on your screen in which you view an application or document. You can open, close, and move windows, and change the size of most windows. You can open several windows at a time, and you can often reduce a window to an icon or enlarge it to fill the entire desktop.
Windows-based application
An application that is designed to run with Windows and does not run without Windows. All Windows-based applications follow similar conventions for arrangement of menus, style of dialog boxes, and use of the keyboard and mouse.
word
  1. An ordered set of bits or characters that is the normal unit in which information may be stored, transmitted, or operated upon within a given computer.
  2. A character string or bit string considered as an entity.
workgroup
A collection of computers that belon. to a common group. Each workgroup is identified by a unique name. Computers in the same or different workgroups can share printers, directories, and ClipBook pages. In the connect dialog boxes, computers are listed by workgroup name.
working area
See: working space
working set
In the paging method of storage allocation, the set of pages that are most likely to be resident in main storage at any given point of a program's execution.
working space
That portion of main storage that is assigned to a computer program for temporary storage of data. Syn: working area; working storage.
working storage
See: working space
workload
The mix of tasks typicall run on a given computer system. Major characteristics include input/output requirements, amount and kinds of computation, and computer resources required. See also: workload model.
workload model
A model used in computer performance evaluation, depicting resource utilization and preformance measure for anticipated or actual workloads in a computer system. See also: system model.
wrap
To continue text onto the next line rather than stopping when the cursor reaches the end of the current line.
write
To record data in a storage device or on a data medium. Contrast with: read.