Integrated Software Development Environment Research Articles

Eliciting Sketched Expressions of Command Intentions in an IDE

Software engineers routinely use sketches (informal, ad-hoc drawings) to visualize and communicate complex ideas for colleagues or themselves. We hypothesize that sketching could also be used as a novel interaction modality in integrated software development environments (IDEs), allowing developers to express desired source code manipulations by sketching right on top of the IDE, rather than remembering keyboard shortcuts or using a mouse to navigate menus and dialogs. For an initial assessment of the viability of this idea, we conducted an elicitation study that prompted software developers to express a number of common IDE commands through sketches. For many of our task prompts, we observed considerable agreement in how developers would express the respective commands through sketches, suggesting that further research on a more formal sketch-based visual command language for IDEs would be worthwhile.

Моделирование влияния разных форм анизотропии кристалла на рост дендритных кристаллов

The physical-mathematics model demonstrates the process of growth of crystalline structures from a solution, taking into account possible factors affecting crystal growth. Anisotropy of crystals is one of the most significant factors affecting the change in the shape of the inclusion in the process of its movement. The simulation was carried out using numerical methods in the integrated software development environment. The result of the program implementation of the proposed mathematical models and algorithms was the computer system for modeling crystal growth from the solution. With the help of simulation modeling, the influence of different forms of anisotropy on the form of growth of dendritic crystals was studied.

Instrumentino: An Open-Source Software for Scientific Instruments.

Scientists often need to build dedicated computer-controlled experimental systems. For this purpose, it is becoming common to employ open-source microcontroller platforms, such as the Arduino. These boards and associated integrated software development environments provide affordable yet powerful solutions for the implementation of hardware control of transducers and acquisition of signals from detectors and sensors. It is, however, a challenge to write programs that allow interactive use of such arrangements from a personal computer. This task is particularly complex if some of the included hardware components are connected directly to the computer and not via the microcontroller. A graphical user interface framework, Instrumentino, was therefore developed to allow the creation of control programs for complex systems with minimal programming effort. By writing a single code file, a powerful custom user interface is generated, which enables the automatic running of elaborate operation sequences and observation of acquired experimental data in real time. The framework, which is written in Python, allows extension by users, and is made available as an open source project.

Застосування методу аналізу ієрархій при виборі інструментальних засобів розробки програмного забезпечення

The article is devoted to decision-making systems which are built using hierarchy analysis method. This approach is used for decision-making about choosing integrated software development environment. Respectively a process of integrated software development environment choosing is taken as a research subject and the DSS appears to be an object. For building such a system an example of problem decomposition to its’ parts an building appropriate hierarchy is supplied. On the basis of expert meanings a pairwise comparison of certain criteria of decision relatively to the problem and also a pairwise comparison of alternatives themselves relatively to these criteria is performed. All the results of such comparison are transformed to numbers by a determined algorithm, which continue to be used for estimating ratings of alternative decision variants. These final ratings are used to make a decision about choosing certain alternative.

Providing an integrated software development environment for undergraduate software engineering courses

Modern team based, collaborative software development requires not only technical expertise from team members, but also interpersonal communication skills, teamwork skills, and management skills fr...

Evaluation of integrated software development environments: Challenges and results from three empirical studies

Evidence shows that integrated development environments (IDEs) are too often functionality-oriented and difficult to use, learn, and master. This article describes challenges in the design of usable IDEs and in the evaluation of the usability of such tools. It also presents the results of three different empirical studies of IDE usability. Different methods are sequentially applied across the empirical studies in order to identify increasingly specific kinds of usability problems that developers face in their use of IDEs. The results of these studies suggest several problems in IDE user interfaces with the representation of functionalities and artifacts, such as reusable program components. We conclude by making recommendations for the design of IDE user interfaces with better affordances, which may ameliorate some of most serious usability problems and help to create more human-centric software development environments.

A New Integrated Software Development Environment Based on SDL, MSC, and CHILL for Large-scale Switching Systems

This paper presents a new software development environment that supports an integrated methodology for covering all phases of software development and gives integrated methods with tools for ITUT (Telecommunication Standardization Section of the International Telecommunication Union) languages. The design of the environment to improve software productivity and quality is based on five main concepts: 1) formal specifications based on SDL (Specification and Description Language) and MSC (Message Sequence Charts) in the design phase, 2) verification and validation of those designs by tools, 3) automatic code generation and a safe separate compilation scheme based on CHILL (CCITT High-Level Language) to facilitate programming-in-the-many and programming-in-the-large. 4) debugging of distributed real-time concurrent CHILL programs, and 5) simulation of application software for integrated testing on the host machine based on CHILL. The application results of the environment compared with other approaches show that the productivity is increased by 19 % because of decreasing implementation and testing cost, and the quality is increased by 83 % because of the formal specifications with its static and dynamic checking facilities.

A requirements engineering environment within a tightly integrated SDE

This paper describes the outside functionality of an RE environment within an integrated software development environment. Furthermore, an integrator tool for the transition to software system architecture modelling is presented. The tools discussed are editors, analysers, executors, monitors, and integration tools of different characteristics for horizontal integration (within RE) and vertical integration (to architecture modelling). All tools are tightly integrated and work incrementally, therefore allowing different forms of construction and modification processes and giving substantial support.

Software reuse in Japan

Software reuse in Japan has been mainly carried on by mainframers as a means to develop effectively their business applications. Each of the Japanese mainframers has developed its own integrated software development environments that support software reuse as one of their major functionalities. Now that they have succeeded in reusing program code and design, they are trying to broaden the target of reuse to include software architectures. The importance of the managerial aspect of software reuse is now being understood. Some companies are putting much stress on the technology transfer issue of software reuse, and others are applying incentive systems to encourage software engineers who participate in software development. This paper outlines the current status of the research and practice of software reuse in Japanese industries and research organizations.

Supporting software reuse within an integrated software development environment (position paper)

Significant gains in programmer productivity have been achieved through the use of simple abstraction mechanisms that enhance the reuse of code. There are other useful forms of abstraction (over arbitrary identifier bindings, for example) which could further increase reuse rates, but are not well supported by programming languages; such forms may be better expressed by exploiting mechanisms provided by an integrated programming environment. This paper outlines ongoing work which aims to provide programming environment mechanisms that support the reuse of code via various forms of abstraction that complement those traditionally provided by programming languages. The concept of derivation-based reuse is also defined, and a generic framework for its support is outlined. In addition, a collection of environment mechanisms, intended to fit within this framework, are outlined.

The Khoros software development environment for image and signal processing

Data flow visual language systems allow users to graphically create a block diagram of their applications and interactively control input, output, and system variables. Khoros is an integrated software development environment for information processing and visualization. It is particularly attractive for image processing because of its rich collection of tools for image and digital signal processing. This paper presents a general overview of Khoros with emphasis on its image processing and DSP tools. Various examples are presented and the future direction of Khoros is discussed.

II.開発プロセスの標準化に基づく総合的開発環境

II.開発プロセスの標準化に基づく総合的開発環境

Building integrated software development environments. Part I

The conceptual modeling approach of the IPSEN (Integrated Project Support Environment) project for building highly integrated environments is based on using attributed graphs to model and implement arbitrary object structures, in particular all kinds of software documents and their relationships. A language based on graph grammars, called PROGRESS (PROgrammed Graph REwriting SyStems), and a suitable method for the application of this language, called graph grammar engineering, have been developed over the last ten years. This language and method are being extensively used for specifying the complex graph structures of internal document representations as well as for specifying the functionality of all tools (editors, browsers, analyzers, debuggers) working on these internal rpresentations. This paper explains the language and the method for applying the language based on a pragmatic nontrivial example of a software production process and its corresponding documents. In particular, it is shown why and how a graph grammar-based strongly typed language is perfectly suitable to formally specify highly integrated software tools. In addition, it is shown that the implementation of these tools (i.e., an environment composed of these tools) is systematically being derived from the formal specifications.

A dynamic C-based object-oriented system for Unix

Calico, a C-based object-oriented language supported by an integrated software development environment, is described. Calico features strict encapsulation, dynamic binding, fast garbage collection, and interoperability with C. It provides a simple, uniformly applied object model, a syntax easily mastered by C programmers, a new multiple inheritance model, simple method-call semantics with some novel extension and effective support for the team development process. Although Calico introduces some unique language features, its primary contribution is the productivity advantage that this feature integration provides for the Unix/C environment. >

Managing Software Projects Designed Using a Graphic Language

Experience with development of engine control software using a graphic design language is presented. The Bendix integrated software development environment centers around an internally developed graphic design language, the Bendix Orthogonal Graphics System (BOGS). BOGS graphics are used to specify every software function, including program flow, and are automatically processed to generate deliverable code. Additional software tools aid in testing and documenting the engine control software. Many software tools are developed in-house, with the benefits of faster response on tool changes and tools better matched to user needs. BOGS is shown to aid in creating structured, modular, readable software that is efficient. The same BOGS language and supporting tools can be used to specify all engine control software designs, independent of target language or CPU. Bendix engine control software designs have common architectural features that support real time control and testing. Self-test functions are common between projects. PC-based software test stations are used to achieve real time software testing on the target CPU at the developer's desk. Speed of execution of tools has improved dramatically as they were rehosted on PC-compatible machines and rewritten to take maximum advantage of the PC capabilities.

Integral: Petri-net approach to distributed software development

As the architecture of modern software systems continues to evolve in a distributed fashion, the development of such systems becomes increasingly complex, which requires the integration of more sophisticated specification techniques, tools, and procedures into the conventional methodology. An essential capability of an integrated software development environment is a formal specification method to capture effectively the system's functional requirements as well as its performance requirements. A validation and verification (V&V) system based on a formal specification method is of paramount importance to the development and maintenance of distributed systems. There has been recent interest in integrating software techniques and tools at the specification level. It is also noted that an effective way of achieving such integration is by using wide-spectrum specification techniques. In view of these points, an integrated V&V system, called Integral, is presented that provides comprehensive and homogeneous analysis capabilities to both specification and testing phases of the life-cycle of distributed software systems. The underlying software model that supports various V&V activities in Integral is primarily based on Petri nets and is intended to be wide spectrum. The ultimate goal of this research is to demonstrate to the software industry, domestic or foreign, the availability and applicability of a new Petri-net-based software development paradigm. Integral is a prototype V&V system to support such a paradigm.

Revision control in an integrated software development environment

We present a graph-based formal approach to revision control that takes consistency relations between revisions of different documents into account. We use a new powerful graph grammar specification language, called PROGRESS, for the rule-based specification of consistency preserving changes to revision graphs. In addition to coarse-grained relations between revisions, we also deal with fine-grained relations between increments which belong to revisions of different documents. Our work provides the formal basis for the construction of a syntax-directed hypertext editor which supports control of revisions and their interrelations.

Monolingual: One way towards the integrated software development environment

The software development is considered as stepwise abstract-implementation process in software like cycle. This paper presents a monolingual methodology and an embryo of MONOL which uses a uniform scheme to describe software development process.

On the structure of structure-oriented editors for different applications

The paper describes the experiences we got from the implementation of a series of syntax-directed editors within an incremental and integrated software development environment. The implementation of all editors is based on the same conceptual ideas for specification and realization which is called graph technology. It is specific for the project a part of which we describe here. Using graph technology yields a very similar software architecture for all editors. We explain the development of such a standard architecture and also outline some specific differences resulting from the corresponding application areas.

LOGOS: An APL programming environment

Programming environments support the creation, maintenance, execution, and deployment of programs. The development of complex application systems written in APL has always been hampered by the lack of a comprehensive programming environment for the language. This paper presents a new approach to software creation and management through the use of LOGOS, an integrated software development environment for APL. LOGOS provides support to the user, developer, and manager of application systems. Its centralized, uniform structure removes much of the drudgery of dealing with software, encourages sharing of ideas and programs among users, and leads to increased programmer productivity and improved software reliability.