Towards innovative software engineering environments

Abstract

The objects produced during the software development process are generally highly interrelated and have a complex structure. Recent works on programming environments and software engineering methodologies attempt to simplify the design and construction of software objects. In practice, people involved in developing software find the current situation frustrating, because existing tools supply only a small amount of automated assistance and tool integration. In this paper we seek an integration by depicting an environment built of two strongly connected components: a system data base, which contains all the software objects pertaining to a project and organizes them under a suitable data model, and a flexible environment language, in which the environment dynamics can be expressed. © 1991.