問36
頻出度★★★
ソフトウェア保守に関する記述として, 適切なものはどれか。
平成26年度 春期 ITパスポート試験 問36
マネジメント系システム開発技術 › システム開発技術
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 36
Incorrectア
Monitoring errors in application programs is the job of system operations (operations management and monitoring), which watches whether the system is running normally. Monitoring only goes as far as detecting anomalies and reporting them; it does not touch the software itself. It becomes maintenance only at the stage where the program is fixed in response to a failure that monitoring found.
- イ
正解 The correct answer is イ. Software maintenance means making changes to the software (the programs) themselves after the system has gone into actual operation. When a bug that testing failed to catch surfaces as a failure after the system is running, you investigate the program that is causing it, fix it, retest it, and release it — this whole sequence of work is exactly the core of maintenance (maintenance that removes faults is called corrective maintenance). Choice イ, “Modifying programs to resolve failures in a system after it has gone into operation,” matches the definition of software maintenance on both counts: the timing (after operation has started) and the object of the work (modifying the programs). Besides corrective maintenance, maintenance also includes adaptive maintenance (adjusting to legal revisions or business changes), perfective maintenance (improving performance and maintainability), and preventive maintenance (heading off future failures), but what all of them share is that the software is changed after the system is in operation.
Incorrectウ
Replacing servers to improve performance is a hardware upgrade or replacement; what is being swapped is equipment, not software. Software maintenance always refers to changes to software assets such as programs and documents, so exchanging a server machine does not qualify (work on the equipment side is treated separately as hardware maintenance or facility replacement).
Incorrectエ
Taking data backups periodically is routine operations work (backup management), done so that data can be restored if it is lost through a failure or a mistaken operation. It is not work that changes programs, so it is not software maintenance.
ここがポイント
- Software maintenance = activities that change the software (the programs) after the system has gone into operation. There are four types: corrective maintenance (fixing failures), adaptive maintenance (responding to legal revisions and business changes), perfective maintenance (improving performance and maintainability), and preventive maintenance (preventing failures before they occur).
- Telling operations apart from maintenance is a frequent exam point. Work that keeps the system running without changing the software — monitoring, backups, job execution, user support — is operations, while work that modifies the programs is maintenance. Replacing hardware is not included in software maintenance.
用語