A mechanism for environment integration

ABSTRACT

This paper describes research associated with the development and evaluation of Odin-an environment integration system based on the idea that tools should be integrated around a centralized store of persistent software objects. The paper describes this idea in detail and then presents the Odin architecture, which features such notions as the typing of software objects, composing tools out of modular tool fragments, optimizing the storage and rederivation of software objects, and isolating tool interconnectivity information in a single centralized object. The paper then describes some projects that have used Odin to integrate tools on a large scale. Finally, it discusses the significance of this work and the conclusions that can be drawn about superior software environment architectures.

REFERENCES

• 1: BOEHM, B. W., AND STANDISH, T. Software technology in the 1990s: Using an evolutionary paradigm. Computer 16, 11 (Nov. 1983).
• 2: BUXTON, J. N., AND STENNING, V. Requirements for Ada programming support environments. Stoneman, DOD, Feb. 1980.
• 3: CLEMM, G.U. Odin--An extensible software environment. Univ. of Colorado, Dept. of Computer Science Tech. Rep. CU-CS-262-84, 1984.
• 4: Geoffrey Michael Clemm, The Odin system: an object manager for extensible software environments, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, 1986
• 5: DEREMER, F., AND KRON, $. Programming-in-the-large versus programming-in-the-small. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. SE-2, 2 (June 1976), 80-86.
• 6: FELDMAN, S.I. Make--A program for maintaining computer programs. Softw. Pract. Exper. 9 (1979), 255-265.
• 7: KASTENS, U., HUTT, B., AND ZIMMERMAN, E. GAG: A Practical Compiler Generator. Springer Verlag, New York, 1982.
• 8: B. W. Kernighan , D. M. Ritchie, The C programming language, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1978
• 9: Butler W. Lampson , Eric E. Schmidt, Practical use of a polymorphic applicative language, Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles of programming languages, p.237-255, January 24-26, 1983, Austin, Texas [doi>10.1145/567067.567090]
• 10: LAMPSON, B., AND SCHMIDT, E. Organizing software in a distributed environment. SIGPLAN Not. 18 (June 1983).
• 11: David B. Leblang , Robert P. Chase, Jr., Computer-Aided Software Engineering in a distributed workstation environment, Proceedings of the first ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN software engineering symposium on Practical software development environments, p.104-112, April 1984
• 12: LEBLANG, D. B., AND MCLEAN, G. D. Configuration management for large scale software development efforts. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Software Engineering for Programmingin-the-Large (Harwichport, Mass., June 1985).
• 13: LEBLANG, D. B., CHASE, R. P., AND MCLEAN, G. D. The DOMAIN software engineering environment for large scale software development efforts. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Workstations (San Jose, Calif., Nov. 1985). IEEE, New York, 1985.
• 14: OLENDER, K., AND OSTERWEIL, L.J. Specification and static evaluation of sequencing constraints in software. In Workshop on Software Testing (Banff, Canada, July 1986), pp. 14-22, and Univ. of Colorado Dept. of Computer Science Tech. Rep. CU-CS-334-86.
• 15: OSTERWE1L, L.J. Software environment research directions for the next five years. Computer 14 (April 1981), 35-43.
• 16: OSTERWEIL, L. J. Toolpack--An experimental software development environment research project. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. SE-9 (Nov. 1983), 673-685.
• 17: RIDDLE, W.E. The evolutionary approach to building the Joseph software development environment. In Proceedings IEEE Softfair--Software Development Tools, Techniques, and Alternatives (Crystal City, Va., July 1983). IEEE, New York, 1983, pp. 317-325.
• 18: Eric Emerson Schmidt, Controlling large software development in a distributed environment, 1982

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Languages