Development methods for quality measurement tools enabled by Open Source Software

The Free and Open Source Software Movement is currently the most interesting and influential trend in software industry as it enables nearly boundless access to software. On the other side future generations of engineers will need more and more profound software knowledge. The article describes a new education level for engineers in quality assurance developed and applied at the Technische Universität Ilmenau. Through broad application of Open Source Software students without any previous knowledge are enabled to develop a customised multi-layer software system to specific problems of practical relevance. The software system is based on an Office client whether from Microsoft Office or OpenOffice connected with a SQL database server. The paper details which difficulties occurred most often during development and to what extent the developed software solutions could be deployed in industry as a cost efficient alternative