DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0026

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

Historically, the process of software development has played an important role in the field of software engineering. A number of software life-cycle models have been developed in the last three decades. These models, although helpful is giving general guidance to software developers, do not expose myriad details that are critical in any large software development project. Recent development however, have unfolded many hidden aspects of the software process, giving rise to a new discipline that we callsoftware process engineering. This paper depicts software process in the context of software environments, examines recent developments in the process field and proposes the concept ofprocess cycle, which embodies the scope of engineering and evolution of software processes. The paper describes the details of the process cycle, including such issues as the role of corporate goals and policies in the engineering, management, performance and improvement of software processes; the transformation of the process artifacts through the process cycle; role of human beings in this (meta-) process; and communications in the cycle.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0027

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

Computers are being applied more and more widely, penetrating ever deeper into the very fabric of society. Mankind is becoming increasingly dependent on the availability of software and its continuing validity. To achieve this consistently and reliably, in an operational domain that is forever changing, requires disciplined execution of the software development and evolution process and its effective management. That is the goal of advanced software engineering [1]. This paper summarises basic concepts of software engineering and of the software development process. This leads to a principle of uncertainty, analysis of its implications for the software development process, an overview of computer-assisted software engineering (CASE) and brief comments on the societal relevance of these topics. For researchers in the field and practitioners familiar with individual concepts, issues and specific solutions, the paper provides a unifying framework, a basis for conceptual advance. Those without a significant practical software engineering background and experienced graduate students will extend general familiarity with fresh insights, new concepts and additional detail. Undergraduate and graduate students without significant experience may treat the paper as an introductory text.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0028

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

Formalising and automating the software life-cycle processes are key factors in the improvement of software productivity. This paper describes the Project Master Database (PMDB) work, three generations of investigations into the modelling and encoding of software life-cycle processes; it briefly describes past activities and concentrates on more recent investigations. It presents an approach to software process modelling based on an object-based model called the PMDB+ model, which includes project elements, relationships between those elements and behavioural descriptions of project life-cycle activities. An overview of the model is presented, together with examples to illustrate the application of the model to existing software processes. It also describes a prototyping exercise that implemented the PMDB+ model in an object-oriented database management system. Key results of these investigations, the impact of process implementations on the architecture of environments, and lessons learnt from the exercises are described.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0029

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

EPOS* is aninstrumentable, kernelsoftware engineering environment (SEE), featuringchange-oriented versioning to manage evolving software products or configurations, through file-based workspaces attached to a versioned DBMS.management of the associated software development processes, i.e. to describe, plan, control and execute software activities.integration of the two areas above.An object-oriented ERA data model, EPOS-OOER, to describe ‘passive’ software products and ‘active’ tasks. Work procedures are expressed as task types, which may be customised through simple versioning in project-specific workspaces.The design, implementation and preliminary experience of EPOS process management is the subject of this paper.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0030

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

This paper describes a software development environment based on a new approach for managing large-scale evolving systems. Under this approach, the conventional notion of a system is augmented with a new component called the law of the system, which is an explicit and strictly enforced set of rules about the operation of the system, about its evolution and about the evolution of the law itself. The resulting combination is called a law-governed system (LGS). The law of a system is not meant to provide its functional specification but to establish the ground rules under which the system is to operate and evolve. We believe that the very existence of such a law, together with assurances that it cannot be violated, can make the system more understandable and, in effect, simpler; in a similar way to how the physical world is effectively simplified by the laws of nature. The feasibility of the proposed architecture has been demonstrated by the construction of a prototype environment (Darwin/1) that supports law-governed systems. The efficacy of this approach has been tested by establishing a wide range of regimes over both the operation of a system and its evolution. These include encapsulation, class-inheritance, evolving layered architecture, various module-interconnection schemes, strategies for exception handling etc.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0031

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

Reuse of products, processes and other knowledge will be the key to enable the software industry to achieve the dramatic improvement in productivity and quality required to satisfy anticipated growing demands. Although experience shows that certain kinds of reuse can be successful, general success has been elusive. A software life-cycle technology that allows comprehensive reuse of all kinds of software-related experience could provide the means of achieving the desired order-of-magnitude improvements. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive framework of models, model-based characterisation schemes, and support mechanisms for better understanding, evaluating, planning and supporting all aspects of reuse.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0032

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

The full power of process programming can only be achieved by a system in which we can dynamically design and execute the software process model, as well as the environment which executes the software process model. We are developing a new process modelling strategy (meta-model) called theobject process modeland an object process modelling environment (meta-environment)OPM, which allows us to design and build both software process models and software development environments that execute the software process models. In the object process model, software process models are not static entities executed by the environment. An executing software process provides a working environment in which software designers can work in order to accomplish a wide variety of software development tasks. InOPM, software process models are described in an object-oriented process programming language calledGaloisand are executed by theGaloisruntime system.OPMitself is written inGalois, and therefore it is considered as a software process running on top of theGaloisruntime system.Galoisis syntactically a superset of C++ but has four major innovations beyond conventional programming languages: meta-classes, derivation, typed functions and rule-based features. This paper presents the object process model and shows how software process models and software development environments can be designed in the process programming languageGalois.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0033

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

In the context of the ESPRIT project DAIDA, we have developed an experimental environment intended to achieve consistency-in-the-large in a multi-person setting. Our conceptual model of configuration processes, the CAD° model, centres around decisions that work on configured objects and are subject to structured conversations. The environment, extending the knowledge-based software information system ConceptBase, supports co-operation within development teams by integrating models and tools for argumentation and co-ordination with those for versioning and configuration. Versioning decisions are discussed and decided on within an argument editor, and executed by specialised tools for programming-in-the-small. Tasks are assigned and monitored through a contract tool, and carried out within co-ordinated workspaces under a conflict-tolerant transaction protocol. Consistent configuration and reconfiguration of local results is supported by a logic-based configuration assistant.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0034

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET

摘要:

The paper presents the evaluation of an atypical software environment that provides comprehensive automated support throughout all phases of the life-cycle. The environment has been operational for a decade; it has been used to implement and maintain a variety of large and complex systems. The paper establishes three criteria for examining atypical environments: the ability to support the process tasks, the ability to support large-scale projects and the ability to improve productivity. Four characterising measures for appraising an environment's impact on productivity are identified, and the software environment is evaluated with respect to these criteria.

DOI:10.1049/sej.1991.0035

出版商:IEE    

年代:1991

数据来源: IET