AN OBJECT-BASED ENVIRONMENT (OPUSDEI) FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE

Abstract

This paper discusses an object-based software development and maintenance environment, Opusdei, built and used for several years at Hitachi Software Engineering (HSK - Since 1994, University of Minnesota has been involved in the Opusdei project.) Industrial software is usually large, has many versions, undergoes frequent changes, and is developed concurrently by multiple programmers. Opusdei was designed to handle various problems inherent in such industrial environments. In Opusdei, all information needed for development is stored using an uniform representation in a central repository, and the various documentation and views of the software artifacts can be generated automatically using the tool repository. Opusdeis’ innovative capabilities are 1) uniform software artifacts representation 2) inter-relation and traceability maintenance among software artifacts 3) tools coordination and tool integration using tool composition scenarios 4) automatic documentation and versioning control. Tool coordination and composition has been discussed in the literature as a possible way to make software development environments more intelligent. Opusdei provides a uniform representation of software artifacts and tools which is an essential first step in addressing the issues of tool coordination and composition. Opusdei has been operational for several years and has been used in many large software development projects. The productivity gain reported for some of these projects, by using Opusdei ranged from 50–90%.