SOFTWARE CLASSIFICATION

Software is a set of programs to perform a specific task. Software includes its configuration programs and files.

Software can be divided into two broad classes:

1. System software
2. application software

1.System Software

System Software is a type of computer program that is design to run a computer's hardware and application programs.System software works either between application programs and hardware or between user and hardware. System software can be divided into five main categories.

• Operating System (OS)
• Device Drivers
• Firmware
• Programming Language Translators
• Utility Software

Operating System

An Operating System is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer program.Modern operating systems have two main user interfaces called command line interface and Graphical User Interface.

The operating system's tasks, in the most general sense, fall into six categories:

• Processor management
• Memory management
• Device management
• Storage management
• Application interface
• User interface

Device Drivers

In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton.Hard disk, monitor, key board, and all other hardware need device drivers to communicate with OS. All operating systems are bundled with device drivers for most commonly used hardware. If an OS does not have a device driver for a particular hardware, it should be installed to get the hardware work.

Firmware

Firmware is a program code that is permanently stored in a chip. Firmware is held in non-volatile memory devices such as ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, and Flash memory.

Programming Language Translators

Programming language translator is software which can translate a program from a higher-level programming language such as C, Java or Python to lower level language such as assembler or machine code language.Programming codes written in ones and zeros are called machine language program codes. There are three types of Programming language translators.

• Interpreter -:Interpreter converts each instruction of the program code to machine code.

• Compiler -:Compiler converts all the instruction codes of the high-level programming language to machine code and save it to a file.

• Assembler -:An assembler is a program that converts assembly language into machine code.

Utility Software

Utility software is designed to help analyse, configure, optimize or maintain a computer.

2.Application Software

Application software is a subcategory of computer software.There are able to use the capabilities of the computer directly and precisely to meet the needs of the customer. Application software can be categorized into two types, 

• horizontal application software.
• vertical application software.

Horizontal application software	Vertical application software
provides solutions based upon the common needs of many companies.	written for particular market or industry.
use of demo copy for entering few transactions can be acceptable test.	for performing test, many days or weeks can be needed by the IT staff and its team.
is not business specific and can be used by various domains.	is business specific and designed for specific domain.
used for small systems.	used for large systems.
easy to use and maintain.	more complicated than horizontal application system

Some of the commonly used application software are:

• Word processors
• Graphics software
• Database software
• Spreadsheet software
• Presentation software
• Web browsers
• Information worker software
• Multimedia software
• Education software