Work space management in software engineering environments

Abstract

A Software Engineering Environment (SEE) must satisfy a number of difficult requirements. Among others there i s a need for (1) maintaining numerous complex artifacts, thus involving databases with high modelling power, (2) supporting the day-to-day work of engineers thus necessitating the support of so called Work Spaces, and (3) supporting cooperation among team members. Each one of these aspects is still a research topic in its own right. A number of research communities: Software Configuration Management, Distributed AI, Operating Systems, Databases, and Process Technology feel concerned by only a sub set of these aspects, while what we need is a consistent approach which covers all facets simultaneously. A WS manager must support the synchronization of objects when shared by concurrent WSs: this is a collaboration policy problem and it links Process Support field with the one of Software Engineering. In this paper we concentrate on how collaboration is handled in the Adele Work Space manager. The claim here is that the WS concept provides a bridge between different areas. It unifies in a consistent way aspects which were previously disparate, taking the best from the different domains involved, instead of trying to build a complete solution by simply extending a single technology within a single domain.