Systems Software

Systems software Applications software such as word processing, spreadsheet or graphics packages Operating systems software to control and monitor the running of application programs, and allow users to communicate with the computer Computers require two types of software

Functions of an operating system Memory management. Resource allocation and scheduling Backing store management Interrupt handling Allowing a user to communicate with the computer

Utility programs Virus checkers check disks and memory for viruses and delete them if detected; Security and accounting software checks user IDs and passwords, counts and reports the number of attempts made to log on under each user ID, the amount of processor time used at each session, total login time and so on; File management utilities attempt to repair corrupted files, reorganise files on disk so that free space is ‘defragmented’, ‘zip’ (compress) files so that they occupy less space. As well as the basic operating system, the systems software available to users includes numerous utility programs, such as:

Virus Scanners In the 1990s, viruses became a serious problem, especially among IBM PC and Macintosh users. The lack of security on these machines enables viruses to spread easily, even infecting the operating system. The production of special anti-virus software has become an industry

DOS (Disk Operating System) tells the computer how to format, read and write information on disk (either floppy or hard) manages peripheral devices such as printer and keyboard controls the execution of application software Also specifies how many files can be held in a disk directory what is an acceptable file or directory name the number of bytes that can be on a disk the amount of memory usable by a program

Command or Shell GUI

Command-driven The user has to type in commands in exactly the correct syntax to perform any operation This allows complex commands to be entered to customise the operating system for a particular user Experienced users may be able to perform operations faster using DOS than by using a mouse and menus or icons in a Windows interface

Command Line with GUI

The GUI and WIMP The Graphic User Interface. The use of pictures rather than just words to represent the input and output of a program. A program with a GUI also runs under some windowing system, which is a GUI See and for more informationhttp://

The Web Browser A program which allows a person to read hypertext (HTML). The browser gives a means of viewing the contents of nodes (or "pages") on the web and of navigating from one node to another.

Systems software Operating system Utility programs perform common useful tasks such as search for lost files, sort files of data into a particular sequence, copy disk files to magnetic tape for backup purposes and so on. Programming language compilers/interpreters are different types of program used to translate the statements in a programming language such as Pascal, Visual Basic, Delphi or C into a form that the computer can understand. Performance monitoring software is used to monitor, analyse and report on the performance of a computer and its components. It can provide information such as the overall utilisation of the processor and number of disk accesses over a given period of time. Communications software. In a mainframe environment, this is executed on a separate, dedicated processor (‘front-end processor’) and controls the flow of data to and from remote locations.