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Trust TU; Debit Card, Trust Payment, and Money Transfer; and
General Ledger and Cyborg Payroll.
Dr. Davis stated that routine software development must be
distinguished from software research efforts. He contended that
software research is characterized by the search for information
(as opposed to the production of code),46 the use of test data (as
opposed to production data), and the presence of technical risk.
By "technical risk", Dr. Davis referred to the development of novel
tasks, the use of familiar technology in a new manner,47 or the size
or complexity48 of the project. However, according to Dr. Davis,
whether a software project is research cannot be cast in terms of
black and white: the fact that the task has been done before is
46 Dr. Davis dismissed Norwest's activities as not
qualified research because Norwest produced operational software
and not information about principles.
47 As an example of this research, Dr. Davis referred to
the development of spreadsheets in C language as opposed to the
lower level assembly-based language. At the time this was first
done, both the C language and spreadsheets were commonly known
and understood, but C had never been used to develop a
spreadsheet. The use of C reduced the amount of memory spent by
the computer in running the spreadsheet program, but it was
unclear until the project was completed that C would also be fast
enough to operate on the then-current generation of personal
computers.
48 As an example of a large project that constitutes
research, Dr. Davis noted the attempted development of a single,
comprehensive reservation system among an airline, a hotel, and a
car rental company which spanned three different businesses,
their operating divisions, and thousands of sites. As an example
of a complex project that might constitute research, Dr. Davis
referred to the efforts of running multiple programs on multiple
machines over a network.
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