The PRESTIGE workbench: CASE support for the implementation phase of JSD

Abstract

The PRESTIGE* Project commenced in January 1988 with the intention of focusing on an area that existing CASE tools for Jackson System Development had hitherto not addressed. The main aim of the Project was to build a toolkit which would provide comprehensive support for the implementation phase of JSD. This paper provides a brief description of JSD. The architecture of the PRESTIGE workbench and its functionality are described and illustrated through simple examples. In particular, the ‘vertical in-the-large’ transformation mechanisms and principles underpinning the toolkit's implementation capability are discussed in relation to the following areas: inversion, state-vector separation, dismemberment, scheduler construction and buffering. The structural organisation of application code produced by using the workbench is described, and the conclusions summarise the success of the PRESTIGE Project. Sample screen dumps used in the paper are produced by the workbench itself and are based mainly on a simple banking system.