Contents
Introduction
A computer system performs various tasks as as the hardware
executes some software (programs). In the domain of software there are
broadly two parts to the solution of a given real world problem. One part
concerns about the requirements of the real world problem at hand and the
other is about making the solution of the former feasible in the computer
which is a complex system in itself. The issues involved in these two parts
are significantly different. For a person who creates programs for his own
real world problems, it is not feasible to take care of the details of
correct hardware operations and optimum utilisation of various system
resources (such as memory, CPU time, peripherals, etc.). On the other hand, a
person who understands the underlying features of a computer system can take
care of this on behalf of different software developers using some general
software modules. Hence software for these two parts are handled
individually. We find software such as MS Office package, Netscape browser,
Oracle DBMS, etc., that take care of some real world problems. These are
called application programs. On the other hand we find software such
as UNIX OS, Windows OS, C Compiler, bash shell, etc. that help users run the
application programs in their computers. These software are called system
programs or system software.
System software is that software which helps an average computer user's
program to execute effectively on a computer system. They address issues
which exist due to the computer system, and thereby make the computer
"usable" for various real world problem solving tasks.