Worldwide, organizations of every shape and size rely on software to help them solve the challenges of today while anticipating the opportunities of tomorrow. While the concept of agility may get more attention, extensibility is a software development design perspective that is just as important.

Extensibility means that companies can build onto the software they already have access to without spending excessive amounts of time and money updating systems to keep up with changes in their business.

This article outlines the key benefits of extensible software, and how that can help drive the success of their organizations.

What Is Extensibility?

Extensibility is a software engineering design principle that seeks to create software platforms that can continuously grow and be improved upon beyond their original purposes and configurations. Put another way, extensibility is a measure of how a system can be extended and a reflection of the amount of effort it would take to achieve specific desired outcomes.

Extensibility allows businesses to respond to emerging challenges by extending existing capabilities. In this way, extensibility is related to other software terms such as adaptability, mutability and agility, as well as concepts like modular software design and interoperability. In essence, all of these concepts describe the ability to modify software and adjust processes to align with new needs.

An extensible system is characterized by an internal structure and associated workflows that are minimally impacted when businesses add new features and functions. That could look and operate differently depending on the specifications of the software and its design. For example, an extensible platform could allow someone to modify its core functions without changing its source code.

Extensibility is a better approach when developing new business solutions because it prepares users for the inevitability of change. Extensibility is closely related to the idea of maintainability, or the ease with which a solution can be supported across its lifecycle. Software systems can have long life cycles, and extensibility is one of the best ways to support better performance and reduce costs over the long term. Extensibility allows businesses to rapidly redesign and configure their solutions to solve new challenges.

Key Takeaways:

  • Extensibility is a software development design methodology that makes it much easier to add new functions and capabilities to existing platforms and frameworks.
  • Greater extensibility means more opportunities for companies to address their shifting business challenges with existing software and tools.
  • It is essential to consider extensibility when implementing new software because it will reduce the costs and other resources required to maintain and update these systems.
  • By working extensibility into software development initiatives, companies are better prepared to capitalize on insights and trends in their space.

Extensibility Explained

Extensibility is the capacity to build on an existing business logic or data models to answer new and emerging questions. It’s a concept closely related to technology infrastructure with an open architecture. An open and highly extensible system is straightforward to add on to, modify and adapt to meet current challenges and shifting needs.

There are immense benefits in developing, implementing and cultivating software environments that deliver true extensibility. Agility is described as the ability to think, move, act and respond quickly, and extensibility allows different pieces of software to adapt and be agile.

Instead of being restricted to addressing original use cases, extensible systems allow your teams to augment the system to help promote future growth. In this way, extensibility is a measure of the effort required to implement the changes needed to accomplish a new task. This measure could be expressed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Importance of Extensibility

The most competitive companies can accomplish more with less and respond to the unique and complex hurdles they face right away. That level of responsiveness is becoming accessible to more companies thanks to software that can interpret data in new ways. Extensibility is fundamental to this, enabling companies to gain the insights they need to make the best decisions by adjusting existing software to new needs without constraining their ability to adapt to future challenges as they emerge.

Innovation is accelerating, making extensibility is particularly valuable right now. It’s a software engineering principle that anticipates and creates the conditions to effectively respond to changes as they occur without sacrificing existing functionality and usability.

Extensible systems have the potential to help organizations around the globe with all kinds of business models be successful. Software development can be extremely costly and time-consuming, and ensuring that systems are extensible is key to reducing costs by facilitating greater utility and efficiency.

Characteristics of Extensible Systems

Software designed with extensibility in mind is much more resilient and offers much greater utility than systems that are less adaptable or that can only be adapted with large expenditures of human and financial capital and deep technical knowledge.

Extensible systems allow:

  1. Software developers can easily modify existing systems.
  2. Developers can add new features within existing lines of code.
  3. The extension of existing systems to respond to emerging challenges.
  4. Businesses can handle more complex and nuanced business needs.
  5. Businesses can respond to change without the need for reinvestment.

Types of Platform Extensibility

Extensibility is a general term that can be applied in different ways depending on the type of software and what it’s used for. The following types of platform extensibility all warrant consideration as your company determines what it needs to succeed in a challenging and competitive environment.

Data Models

Extensibility is extremely important when it comes to organizing the way software systems make use of information. In particular, an extensible data model would be able to consider many different parameters, values, metrics, measures and KPIs without having to reconfigure the entire system. Instead of developing an algorithm to address a specific issue, an extensible system might act as a platform that provides an interface allowing users design and manage their own data models and business logic, enabling them to reprogram and redeploy the system towards new objectives and goals.

Processes

Business process extensibility is essential for developing new approaches to major challenges. Interoperability is a term used to describe how easily new technologies can work with existing systems. Competitive companies need to be able to design new processes that build off existing capabilities, and prevents them from returning to square one in the design process to adjust the core functionality of a software system.

User Interface (UI)

Today, companies have access to a wealth of real-time information regarding how users interact with their products and services. Developing a more extensible user interface enables companies to tailor experiences to user needs without compromising core functions. This is one way that extensibility creates the foundation for a culture of continuous improvement of the end user experience.

Integration

Extensibility promotes the integration of business processes, platforms and systems, making it much easier for different business divisions, teams and projects to collaborate. Integrations built on open standards boost efficiency and can drive better business results, especially when integrated systems function as part of a single, unified solution for running the entire business.

Extensibility vs. Reusability

It is tempting to think of extensibility and reusability as the same thing, but there are key differences. They are both used to describe the ability to use existing functionality to support new uses. But extensibility refers to adaptability and the ability to add on to and adjust a system, while reusability offers utility but without the same potential to adjust, modify and optimize a system on the fly to address new and emerging challenges. While it is useful and perhaps quite economical to reuse existing business logic, deploying truly extensible systems offers a much higher degree of utility in the long term.

Another way you can think of this is to consider that while doing things the same way every time might make specific tasks easier to accomplish, it does not necessarily mean they are being completed in the most efficient way. Extensibility allows businesses to design the best possible solutions instead of simply sticking to what has been done historically.

Extensibility and Security

Extensibility and security do not need to be competing goals when software development teams think pragmatically about the best way to deploy new products and services. Some argue that extensibility creates fundamental security shortfalls, but that’s not necessarily true.

Extensibility and security are complementary ideas that are both critical in designing the best possible software environments for tackling strategic business issues – it cannot simply be a matter of one or the other. Both extensibility and security must align, and systems need to be designed to incorporate both of these ideas to respond to the challenges of the current business landscape.

Classification of Extensibility

Extensibility is designed within different pieces of software according to what specific areas of the development process are changed or altered. These byproducts are known to software development teams as artifacts. Alterations to different artifact types create classification criteria for evaluating and measuring extensibility.

White Box

White box extensibility refers to a software system that can be directly altered, extended or modified by changing its known and available source code. That is considered the most flexible and adaptable of all types of extensibilities.

Black Box

Black box extensibility does not use any details about a system’s implementation but relies only on specific changes made to existing interfaces. This type of approach is considered much more limited than white box solutions.

Grey Box

Grey box extensibility is a middle ground between white and black box extensibility. Software development teams could be provided a system’s specialization interface, which subsequently shares abstractions for refinement and specifications on how extensions should be developed.

Examples of Extensible Applications

Extensible design methods can be employed in all types of business software. Regardless of the type of software, as a general rule there are benefits to making it much easier to build on existing capabilities.

Web browsers are some of the most widely used software platforms globally. Many of the world’s most popular internet web browsers were designed explicitly with extensibility in mind to allow other developers to build onto the existing frameworks to offer new products and services. This includes browser add-ons for blocking pop-up ads, opening PDF files or finding discount codes.

Extensibility is a design perspective that has been implemented to design many different programming languages and frameworks for developing software, including:

  • Camlp4
  • Felix
  • Nemerle
  • Seed7
  • Red (programming language)
  • Rebol
  • Ruby (programming language) (Metaprogramming)
  • IMP (programming language)
  • OpenC++
  • XL (programming language)
  • XML (programming language)
  • Forth (programming language)
  • Scheme (programming language)
  • Lisp (programming language)
  • Lua
  • Racket (programming language)

NetSuite’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is an example of extensible business software. NetSuite is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that offers developers and administrators a number of tools and technologies to tailor ERP to meet their exact needs, which are included with the SuiteCloud Platform available to all customers at no extra charge.  SuiteCloud enables businesses to configure, customize, build, test and release applications and customizations, as well as deploy extended functionality through prebuilt SuiteApps from NetSuite and its partners. This approach to extensibility enables NetSuite customers to cost-effectively adapt to new challenges that arise as their business grow.

Extensibility is an approach to software development that allows businesses to easily extend the functionality of systems, helping them adapt to evolving conditions and solve emergent problems. Working to enhance the extensibility of systems and operational processes helps global enterprises to be more agile and resilient.

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Extensibility FAQs

How does extensibility work?

Extensibility can work in various ways depending on what specific platform or system is being considered. In essence, extensible systems are highly adaptable and can be modified to solve new challenges without losing core functionality or requiring large investments of time and money.

What businesses/industries benefit from extensible applications?

Delivering and using more extensible applications should be a priority for any company, regardless of industry. Businesses that are highly dependent on data and that operate in incredibly competitive and fast-changing market conditions are likely to gain the biggest advantages from using extensible solutions. All companies using the software can integrate extensibility into designing, implementing, and deploying new systems.

How to integrate extensibility in my business solutions?

Many businesses are constrained by rigid and isolated business processes that do not promote continuous improvement or the ability for teams to collaborate efficiently across business divisions. That is where extensibility comes in.

While there is no single way to take advantage of extensibility, building an intelligent and efficient software environment starts with anticipating change and working toward solutions that are responsive and adaptive without compromising existing functionality.