A conceptual framework for software development

ABSTRACT

Large scale software development is an intrinsically difficult task. Developers use a set of specialized tools to alleviate some of this difficulty. The problem is that most of these tools are not integrated and do little to help developers and managers maintain an overall view of the development by organizing the software entities, created by tools, in a consistent fashion. Our solution, called the Software Landscape, provides developers with a conceptual framework of integrated tools while providing a metaphor for managing the complexities of large-scale software development. The Software Landscape is a metaphor of a country-side viewed from above in which each major entity, such as a software project, appears as a large plot of land, and each minor entity, such as a source C module, is contained within a plot. Plots can be libraries of reusable software as well as ongoing developments. A Software Landscape can be used as a mechanism that allows the developer to navigate around the entities created during the software development process, much the way a flight simulator allows one to “fly” and optionally to dive down to entities of interest. During this flight, and controls their level of visible detail. This model is constructive, allowing the developer to manipulate, as well as view, the entities of the Landscape.

REFERENCES

• 1: Grady Booch, Object oriented design with applications, Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Co., Inc., Redwood City, CA, 1990
• 2: Peter Coad , Edward Yourdon, Object-oriented analysis, Yourdon Press, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1990
• 3: ECMA. Portable Common Tool Environment (PCTE) Abstract Specification. Tech. Rep. Technical Report No. 149, European Computer Manufacturers Association, December 1990.
• 4: ECMA. A Reference Model for Frameworks of Computer Assisted Software Engineering Environments. Tech. Rep. Technical Report No. 33, European Computer Manufacturers Association, August 1991.
• 5: Adele Goldberg, SMALLTALK-80: the interactive programming environment, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1984
• 6: HOLT, R. C. The Design of OOT: Object Oriented Turin#. Tech. Rep. CSRI Technical Report, University of Toronto, 1991.
• 7: Richard C. Holt , James R. Cordy, The Turing programming language, Communications of the ACM, v.31 n.12, p.1410-1423, Dec. 1988 [doi>10.1145/53580.53581]
• 8: HOLT, R. C., PENNY, D. A., AND MANCORIDIS, S. Multicolour Programming and Metamorphic Programming: Object Oriented Programming-inthe-Large. Tech. Rep. Technical Report No. 74.087, IBM Canada Laboratory, March 1992.
• 9: MANCOKIDIS, S. A Visual Programming Environment for Object-Oriented Turing. Master's thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 1992.
• 10: L. Osterweil, Software processes are software too, Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Software Engineering, p.2-13, March 1987, Monterey, California, United States
• 11: David A. Penny , Richard C. Holt , Michael W. Godfrey, Formal Specification in Metamorphic Programing, Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium of VDM Europe on Formal Software Development-Volume I: Conference Contributions, p.11-30, October 21-25, 1991
• 12: Steven P. Reiss, Pecan: Program development systems that support multiple views, Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Software engineering, p.324-333, March 26-29, 1984, Orlando, Florida, United States
• 13: Thomas Reps , Tim Teitelbaum, The synthesizer generator, Proceedings of the first ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN software engineering symposium on Practical software development environments, p.42-48, April 1984
• 14: tLTMAN, A. The Theory-Model Paradigm in Software Design. Tech. Rep. Technical Report No. 74.048, IBM Canada Laboratory, October 1989.
• 15: TEITELMAN, W., AND MASINTEK, L. The lnterlisp Programming Environment. Computer Science Press, Los Alamitos, California, 1981.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.1 Requirements/Specifications
          Subjects: Methodologies (e.g., object-oriented, structured)

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: User interfaces; Computer-aided software engineering (CASE)

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.3 Software Management
          Subjects: Software development

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Management