Engineering application software

American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Applications Software Survey for Personal Computers, AlOiE, New York, mi. 

Obviously, robotic techniques are more complex than other automated laboratory analytical techniques. Laboratory robots were originally marketed as do-it-yourself technology. Some of the first practitioners were chemists who were not skilled in the engineering and software aspects, so highly trained, dedicated personnel were needed. In many applications, the overall lead times to implementation became excessive and chemists were often sidelined for months awaiting the tools they needed to do their job. 

In an effort to reduce the complexity of engineering and software designs, many systems now use the concept of so-called "objects". These allow even the most complex engineering designs or software constructs to be built up from smaller building blocks known as objects. Most open applications are now based on object-oriented software, since this technique lends itself to efficient software development and easier software integration between different applications. 

The application software is speeific and may be developed either by Schneider Eleetrie, by an engineering company or by the eustomer himself. 

Many customers conduct a factory acceptance test to check the correct operation of the hardware and application software before it is shipped to the plant. The hardware and application software are thoroughly tested by the customer s engineers and other operating personnel. 

The majority of DClM-MS instruments described to date have been built in-house in a small number of laboratories of leading physical chemists. Because the construction of these instruments requires very significant mechanical, electrical, engineering, and software support, the wider application of the technique has been limited markedly. The laboratories concerned must not only manufacture and integrate the mobility device but must assemble mass spectrometric instrumentation that competes with commercial offerings in terms of sensitivity, ease of use, reliability, capability of interfacing with separation science approaches, and acquisition and processing software. 

As opposed to application software, the requirements of system software are tied directly to the capabilities of the hardware platform. The requirements must deal with computer concepts such as hardware resources and interfaces. The software engineering of system software typically requires specialized knowledge such as transaction processing for databases or process scheduling for operating systems. 

Lehman, M. M. (1980). On understanding laws, evolution, and conservation i n the large-program life cycle, J. Systems Software 1,213-221. Lehman, M. M. (1989). Uncertainty in Computer Applications and its Control through the Engineering of Software, J. Software Main. 1(1). Lientz, B., and Swanson, E. B. (1980). Software Maintenance, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. 

Richard Szczepanski is a director of Infochem Computer Services Ltd., a consultancy specializing in physical property data and software for chemical engineering and petroleum engineering applications. His main area of work is in modelling phase and chemical equilibria. Dr. Szczepanski was formerly a Project Leader at the BP Research Centre and a lecturer in chemical engineering at Imperial College, London. 

Bermell-Garcia P, Verhagen WJC, Astwood S, Krishnamurthy K, Johnson JL, Ruiz D, Scott G, Curran R (2012) A framework for management of knowledge-based engineering applications as software services enabling personalization and codification. Adv Eng Inform 26 219-230... 

CT and MRI are powerful techniques for medical imaging and reverse engineering applications however, they are the most expensive techniques in terms of both hardware and software for data processing (Table 12.4). 

---