INFORMATION SYSTEM SOFTWARE

In general, software are the program consists of all the electronic instruction that tell the computer how to perform a task. Software can be divived into two categories, which is Application Software and System Software.

• Application Software are software that has been developed to solve a particular problem for user and perform useful work on sepcific tasks or to provide entertainment,it designed to make users more productive and assist them with personal tasks. 
• System Software consists the programs that control or mantain the operations of the computers and its devices. 

Appication software for business comes in two primary forms:

(1.) Custom Software: Are the software applications that are developed within an organization for use by that organization, it was owned by the organization that developed it.

(2.) Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS): Are the software developed with the intention of selling the software in multiple copies.

Application software includes a variety of programs that can be subdivided into general-purpose and application-specific categories. At here we would to discuss about the comparison between General Purpose Application Software and Function-Specific Application Software.

General-Purpose Application Software
General-purpose applications packages are programs that perform common information processing hobs for end users. For example, word processing programs, electronic spreadsheet programs, database management programs, graphics programs, communications programs, and integrated packages are popular with microcomputer users for home, education, business, scientific, and many other general purposes. They are also known as productivity packages, because they significantly increase the productivity of end users. This packaged software is also called off-the-shelf software packages, because these products are packaged and available for sale. Many features are common to most packaged programs.

Here are some example of the General-Purpose Application Program and its fuction.

(i.)Web Browsers - Example of browers such like Internet Explorer,  Mozilla Firefox,  The World, Opera, Safari, Netscape, Tencent Traveler, Maxthon and Chrome are software applications that support navigation through the point-and–click hyper-linked resources of the Web. Besides, it was used to gain access to Internet search engines. For examples: Google, Look Smart and Yahoo. People will using search engines to find the information and it had become an very indispensable part of Internet, Intranet, and extranet applications.

Web Browsers

(ii.)Electronic mail (E-Mail) - Are software to communicate by sending and receiving messages and attachments via the internet, intranet, or extranet. Such like Instant messaging (IM), it used to receive electronic messages instantly. Besides, such like weblog are kind of a personal website in dated log format and it can updated with new information about a subject or range of the subjects.

MSN                   &                Weblog

(iii.)Word Processing - Used to create, edit, revise, and print documents. For examples: Microsoft Word, Lotus wordpro and Corel WordPerfect.

Microsoft word

(iv.)Desktop Publishing - Produce printed materials that look professionally published. For examples: Adobe PageMaker, and Microsoft Publisher.

Adobe PageMaker

(v.)Electronic Spreadsheets - A type of computer software for performing mathematical computations on numbers arranged in rows and columns, in which the numbers can depend on the values in other rows and columns, allowing large numbers of calculations to be carried out simultaneously.

Spreadsheet

(vi.)Presentation Graphics - Common presentation graphics packages used to create multimedia presentations of graphics, photos, animations and video clips. For examples: Microsoft PowerPoint and Lotus Freelance. The top packages can tailor files and transfer in HTML format to websites.

Microsoft Power Point

(vii.) Database Software - Kind of software that provides tools for organizing data into a form that allows for efficient search and retrieval. Data related to a specific question of concern can be accessed using a database query.

Databas Software

(viii.)Personal Information Managers(PIM) - PIM are software package for end-user productivity and collaboration, as well as a popular application for personal digital assistant (PDA) handheld devices.

(ix.) Groupware - software that helps workgroups collaborate on group assignments.For examples: Windows SharePoint Services and WebSphere both allow teams to create websites for information sharing and document collaboration.

Function-Specific Application Software

Many application programs are available to support specific applications of end users. Such like Business Application Programs, it was the programs that accomplish the information processing tasks of important business functions or industry requirements. Besides, likeScientific Application Programs are the programs that perform information processing tasks for the natural, physical, social, and behavioral sciences, engineering and all other areas involved in scientific research, experimentation, and development. There are so many other application areas such as customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, wed-enabled electronic commerce and etc.