Integrated Software Engineering Environment Research Articles

Research on Heterogeneous Component Assembly Problems Based on Software Product Line

With the research and development of software product line and component-based software engineering methodology, it has become key technology how to build component assembly environment and realize heterogeneous component assembly. Thus, a new industrialized product line based integrated software engineering environment (PL-ISEE) model is firstly proposed, and the heterogeneity problems of developed components are analyzed and discussed. For removing components heterogeneity and realizing heterogeneous components assembly, the wrapper wrapping component is studied further. These researches and ideas will play significant role in promoting the formations of component-based software engineering methodology and future industrialized software production technology.

An Ideal Schema Design of an Industrialized PL-ISEE Database Platform

Using the automation production and management system of modern manufacturing industry product line for reference, a new industrialized PL-ISEE (product line based integrated software engineering environment) model was proposed by us in reference [4]. In the new model, the middle part in the PL-ISEE architecture is data layer which is composed of the software components bus and environment database platform to achieve the storage and managements of product line core assets data. In this paper, the environment database platform architecture and its schema design as well as implementation mechanism are further researched. Whole database platform architecture consists of the product line asset objects management service and core assets database system. The data model and database schema of the database system are designed and created by using a united core asset concept model and data organization model. The database supporting platform with the model and schema can well satisfy all the requirements of interfaces, tools and data integration as well as product line assembling production in the PL-ISEE. Therefore, the design and realizing ideas of the PL-ISEE database platform will be useful for researching on product line engineering and methodology in the future.

Research on the Realizing Mechanism of an Industrialized PL-ISEE Database Platform

Using the automation production mode of modern manufacturing industry for reference, a new industrialized PL-ISEE (product line based integrated software engineering environment) model was proposed by us in reference [8]. The middle part of the PL-ISEE architecture is data layer which is composed of the software components bus and core assets database platform to achieve the storage and managements of product line core assets data. In this paper, the architecture and its implementation mechanism of the PL-ISEE database platform is further researched. Whole platform architecture consists of core asset objects management service and assets database system. The data model and database schema as well as database views of the database platform are designed and created by using united product line concept model and data model. So, the database supporting platform’s functions and configuration also well satisfy the requirements of interfaces, tools and data integration as well as product line assembling production in the PL-ISEE. Therefore, the design and realizing ideas of the PL-ISEE database platform will be valuable to research product line engineering and methodology in future.

Research on the CORBA Implementation Mechanism of a New Industrialized PL-ISEE

Borrowing the automation production and management system of modern manufacturing industry production line, a new industrialized PL-ISEE (product line based integrated software engineering environment) architecture was proposed by us in the reference [6]. This kind of new architecture model is a hiberarchy double development environment model with the product line core assets as the software components bus. The upper part on the bus is the software product line development environment to achieve the assembly line production of software products; under the bus is a traditional software development environment to achieve the development of core asset component source program and related documents. For this new PL-ISEE model, its implementation framework and mechanisms as well as methods based on the CORBA are further proposed and studied in this paper. Such the implementation of the new PL-ISEE and own developing abilities are similar to the assembly line and management system of modern manufacturing industry, and it will be an ideal production environment of computer software industry and pattern of software engineering in the future.

A Study on Framework and Realizing Mechanism of ISEE Based on Product Line

Using product line automatic production procedure and the management system of modern manufacturing industry for reference, a new model of integrated software engineering environment based on product line is put forward, and framework and realizing mechanism of the new model is mainly analyzed in this paper. The new model takes product line core asset (resource) components as the agent bus. The upper of it supports the product line development environment realizing the assembling production of software products, while the lower is traditional common software development environment implementing the development of source codes and documents of product line core resource components. Compared with the present available product line development environment models, the developing and realizing ability of the new one is completely similar to production mode of automatic product line and management system of current manufacturing industry, will be likely to become an ideal software production environment that the future software engineering industry develops.

What happened to integrated environments? (panel session)

20 years ago, in 1979, a landmark community-wide process was launched to establish notional requirements for integrated software engineering environments. The resulting "Stoneman" document was published in February 1980. Bred of the software engineering research community and catalyzed by the Government Ada sponsor, this "integrated environment movement" branched out and was embraced widely in the software engineering community in the 1980's as a needed, achievable, centrist approach to accelerate the benefits of disciplined software engineering into mainstream practice. The CASE tool industry bloomed as products integrating lifecycle activities and artifacts emerged, and research evolved to environments integrated by support for emerging, maturing notions of software processes. Yet, at the end of the 1990's, this movement appears to have virtually died, and more and more production software organizations are instead (or again) using old-fashioned stand-alone development tools and struggling to match up tools and their outputs and inputs to do software engineering. The purpose of this panel is to explore the reasons why the integrated environment movement has retreated, whether the recent tools and methods are or are not achieving the goals of integrated environments, whether those goals have been superceded by other goals better served without integrated environments, and what these examinations indicate about future requirements and research needs.

The HELIOS medical software engineering environment

The aim of the HELIOS project is to create an integrated Software Engineering Environment (SEE) to facilitate the development and maintenance of medical applications. HELIOS is made of a set of software components, communicating through a software bus called the HELIOS Unification Bus. The object oriented paradigm is used both as the basic structure for building the software components and as the methodology for modelling, storing and retrieving the entities and procedures used in an application. Development standards include UNIX as operating system and X Window/MOTIF as windowing environment. One of the target applications for the HELIOS prototype is the development of a multimedia medical workstation as a front end to a hospital information system.

A framework for source code search using program patterns

For maintainers involved in understanding and reengineering large software, locating source code fragments that match certain patterns is a critical task. Existing solutions to the problem are few, and they either involve manual, painstaking scans of the source code using tools based on regular expressions, or the use of large, integrated software engineering environments that include simple pattern-based query processors in their toolkits. We present a framework in which pattern languages are used to specify interesting code features. The pattern languages are derived by extending the source programming language with pattern-matching symbols. We describe SCRUPLE, a finite state machine-based source code search tool, that efficiently implements this framework. We also present experimental performance results obtained from a SCRUPLE prototype, and the user interface of a source code browser built on top of SCRUPLE.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

A query service for a software engineering database system

The PCTE interfaces define a Public Tool Interface intended to serve as a basis for the construction of integrated software engineering environments (SEEs). The interfaces include Object Management System (OMS) services that manage the data repository of the environment. The OMS is based on a binary Entity-Relationship model. This paper describes a query service constructed on the PCTE interfaces. Following a brief summary of the OMS features that are necessary to understand the paper, we describe the requirements and design objectives for a query service in an integrated SEE, the basic model for our solution, and then review the facilities of the service. The paper also contains a comparison with other work on queries on E-R and object-oriented databases. The paper's conclusions indicate the differences that exist between requirements and characteristics for query services on SEE data repositories and those for other databases. It shows, for example, how assumptions about data availability and accessibility that are often made for query services are not appropriate for SEE data repositories.

The TAME project: towards improvement-oriented software environments

Experience from a dozen years of analyzing software engineering processes and products is summarized as a set of software engineering and measurement principles that argue for software engineering process models that integrate sound planning and analysis into the construction process. In the TAME (Tailoring A Measurement Environment) project at the University of Maryland, such an improvement-oriented software engineering process model was developed that uses the goal/question/metric paradigm to integrate the constructive and analytic aspects of software development. The model provides a mechanism for formalizing the characterization and planning tasks, controlling and improving projects based on quantitative analysis, learning in a deeper and more systematic way about the software process and product, and feeding the appropriate experience back into the current and future projects. The TAME system is an instantiation of the TAME software engineering process model as an ISEE (integrated software engineering environment). The first in a series of TAME system prototypes has been developed. An assessment of experience with this first limited prototype is presented including a reassessment of its initial architecture. >

From singular tool to integrated software engineering environment

From singular tool to integrated software engineering environment