Question

1. Describe the role of a “Back-End” computer engineer in creating software. Give examples of decisions back end engineers make. Use the relationship between long-term and short-term memory as context for decision examples.

3. Briefly describe Abstract Data Types (ADT) or Abstract Data structures in general. Why are Abstract data structures implemented? Make sure to use your own words.

Answer 1

1.) Front end and back end are terms used by computer professionals to describe the layers that build up hardware, a computer program or a website which are based on how accessible they are to a user. In this context, the user refers to an entity that could be human or digital.

The back end refers to parts of a computer application or a program's code that allow it to operate and that cannot be accessed by a user. Most data and operating syntax are stored and accessed in the back end of a computer system. Typically the code is comprised of one or more programming languages. The back end is also called the data access layer of software or hardware and includes any functionality that needs to be accessed and navigated to by digital means.

Back end is responsible for developing part of the product that works on the server.

2.) Abstract Data Type: ADT may be defined as a set of data values and associated operations that are precisely specified independent of any particular implementation. Thus an Abstract Data Type is an organized collection of information and a set of operations used to manage that information. The set of operations defines the interface of the ADT. As long as the ADT fulfills the conditions of the interface, it doesn’t really matter how the ADT is implemented. Since, in ADT, the data values and operations are defined with mathematical precision, rather than as an implementation in a computer language, we may reason about effects of the operations, relations to other abstract data types whether a program implements the data type etc. One of the simplest abstract data type is the stack data type for which functions might be provided to create an empty stack, to push values onto a stack and to pop values from a stack.

Data Structures: The following are the characteristic features of data structures:

1. It contains component data items, which may be atomic or another data structure (still a domain).

2. A set of operations on one or more of the component items.

3. Defines rules as to how components relates to each other and to the structure as a whole (assertions).