Evaluation of contemporary software engineering techniques for a large fortran simulation

Abstract

Those software-engineering/structured-programming techniques designed to detect software errors early and facilitate coding, validation, and maintenance were applied in developing the Trident Computational Simulation (TRICS) at the Naval Surface Weapons Center (NSWC) in Dahlgren, Virginia. This continuous simulation permits validation of the fire control computations required to determine missile presets prior to launch from a Trident submarine. In addition, it permits dynamic (run-time) connectivity of computational subsets (no core penalty for unused subsets) for the purposes of research and experimentation. In the past, development of applications models at NSWC has depended upon the skills and intuition of individual programmers applying their favorite and immutable ad hoc methods. On the other hand, TRICS was developed by a team of programmers applying an independent and established methodology. This was supplemented by a stringent set of programming and documentation standards as well as in-house tools for automating and managing frequently occurring programming activities. The end result was a highly flexible and user-oriented simulation. The tools and techniques used are identified, and an evaluation of their effectiveness is presented by examining error data collected during the development cycle.