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Pace 56

PG WEEKNAPPLICATION DEVELOPMENT —

[O APPIJED INTELLIGENCE K
Design Projects Reguire Tools with Multiple Functions

€ reguirements traceability, or soft:

€ embedded methodology aids. and for an integrated project support
Although last.<ware used to generate reports tracing A critical attribute of the non-inte- environment (IPSE).

weeks column the linkage between original reguire- grated CASE category is support for the To be competitive, CASE tools will

focused on the  ments specifications and the resulting Unix environment —a trait not support- | have to support reguirements such as

sweeping pro- source code and documentation; ed in any I-CASE tool. a software-backplane environment

ductivity bene- ' software backplane, or the ability to With the worldwide pace gulckening | that will enable buyers to select "best

fits of integrat- — mix products from multiple vendors; toward Unix, tools need to be capable of breed" CASE products for each

ed CASE tools, € compatibility with industry-stan- of generating a full application in C phase of the life cycle.

ba tol kam CASE tools will also be reguired to

short of provid- handle cooperative-processing and

ing a range of important Funetlons of a CASE Tool eljent/server applications that are

auxiliary or š compliant with the services offered by

secondary func- Piatiti IBM SAA or Digital's NAS environ-

tions. There- kal sh ments. In turn, these applications
MARTIN fore, users seek- šegi? should be portable across a variety of

ing project: —

managment:
assistance for design projects or sup-
port for alternative operating environ-
ments need to evaluate the non-inte-
grated tool class that delivers many of
these specialized capabilities.

To reiterate, the following functions
are critical to obtain maximum pro"
ductivity from a CASE tool: a graph-
icsoriented interface; support for the
entire life-cycle process; desktop gener-
ation of code for 100 percent of an ap-

C, Ada, etc.; and support for industry
standards such as the Structured Gue-
ry Language (SOL) and IBM's
AD/Cyele repository standard, which
defines design information.

While the best-selling I-CASE tools
support. most of these primary reguire-
ments for high-end productivity, they
lack the palette of extra functions that
some users deem critical for the full
application-development; life cycle.

As shown in the figure, these addi-
tional functions include the following:

€ generation of applications for the
Unix environment;

' support for multiple analysts
working on a LAN;

€ support for real-time applications,

€ project-management functions;
€ configuration and version control;

Continued from Page 55

ware Inc. in Edmonds, Wash.

"This new code generator can't be com-
pared with the old version because of the
number of new features that we've add-
ed," Kloes said.

The new screen painter, designed for
both novice and expert developers, builds
data-entry sereens simply by selecting the
appropriate fields from an Informix data-
base dictionary, Kloes explained, Once the
sereen design is complete, FourGen-Screen
automatically produces the necessary
code, he added.

order-entry and inveni -control 4
tion, Gonzales said. me sonia

plication; generation of code in COBOL,

Local repository

AblCyele-compliant) 2

Ne iii

ttastes specibcatons or rear time.

19 COTVADTVORV OUSTNESE

Kovič etos ———-
— 7 generdtes cbde oh the pesktoo Vzx2i

COBOL anno A02 Id tare error

METISBUCII A5 SAA, POG! dAS ao ma

UPPOTE FOL: - 4

G: Šhatedi repositoty 9"

mea tile server H

Bdtč ia TT 7

dard architectures such as IBM's Sys-
tems Application Architecture and Dig-
ital Eguipment's Network Application
Support;

€ support for cooperative-processing
and client/server applications;

6 portability of applications among
multiple platforms;
forward and reverse engineering; and

Wtrpie analysis on a £4Aw
: Project managermen

« Cooperative processing, client
server applicatiohs H

language for a Unix target envi-
ronment.

Most I-CASE tools also are unable to
adeguately support a work-group envi-
ronment, which allows multiple analysts
to share and consolidate design specifi-
cations across a LAN,

Similarly, most I-CASE tools provide
poor support for real-time applications

FourGen | Code Generator Revised

'The new version lets users easily navl-
gate throtigh the system to gather the lu:
formation needed to build applications,
Gonzales sald.

You can position the data fields wher-
ever you care to, and if you are unsure.of
the name ofaapecific table or column, you
can hit a control key to list all available
data," Gonzales explained,

Users can attach free-form notes to any
data field—a feature that was lacking in
the original FourGen code generator. "Af-
taching a note to a field usually reguires a
lot of extra coding," Gonzales said. The
new version lets users attach notes to a
field or a cohimn without changing any of
he underlying code, he added,

FourGen Screen will run with a variety
of Informix-4GL, versions for Unix, as well
ns Unix operating systems from The Santa
Cruz Operatlon Ine., ATST, Digital Eguip-
ment Corp. and NCR Corp. Pricing starta
at $2,405.

FourGen Software Inc. can be reached
at (206) 776-5088.

ANN

ramen

hardware and software platforms.
Reverse engineering and re-engineer-

success of a CASE tool. Reverse engi-
neering is an analyst-assisted process
that extracts high-level specifications
from existing source code. Re-engineer-
ing merely scans the source code to re-
solve inconsistencies, while restructur-
ing process or data definitions.

- Embedded methodology aids, which

extra feature in a CASE tool. To this
end, embedded computer-based train-
ing tools will offer this training within
a window in the CASE tool.

Next week, I will discuss the gues-
tions that should be asked when as-
sessing the functionality of a CASE
tool for your organization. N

The concepts embodied. in this article
are described in the CASE volume in
The James Martin Report Series. For
more information, on this volume,
call (617) 6399-1958. For information
on seminars, contact (in the United
States and, Canada) Technology
Transfer Institute, 741 10th Št., San-
ta Monica, Calif. 90402 (213) 394-
8305. In Europe, contact Savant, 2
New St, Carnforth, Lancs, LA5 9BX
United. Kingdom (0524) 734 505.

Borland ! Code Reusability Is Key

Continued from Page 55

Projects that lend themselves to OOP lan:
guages are medium-sized to large applica-
tions, graphical user interfaces and inte-
grated applications, according to David In-
tersimone, director of developer relations
for the Scotts Vally, Calif., company. Device
drivers or applications that have critical
dependencies on efficiency and size are not
good candidates for OOP, he said.

Competent C ers can
to learn C-- syntax in about four weeks
and be up and running in about three to
PO orle daenai kleni Ur

me attendees ut the
time frames. "I thought [Borland] was
overly optimistic,' said Paul Johnson, vice
president of research and development for
Great. American Software Inc., a software
developer in Nashua, N.H.

Even Borland officials acknowledge
that the learning curve involved in switch-
ing to an object-oriented style can mean a
significant investment in development

ti

arr paper oman

time—initially, personnel hours could be
magnified by as much as 40 percent, they
said. Nonetheless, seminar attendees were
enthusiastic about the long-range produc-
tivity payoffs—mainly, minimal redun-
dant coding and fewer programmers re-
guired for a project.
The primary benefit will be reusability
Of code, because I can't afford the number
of programmers it takes now to keep up
with our work and [stay competitive
said David Steinberg, a senior software
engineer for Analogic lnc., an electronics
maufacturer in Wakefield, Mass.
'Though interest, was high, most seminar
attendees were just evaluating
ing it for the first time. One factor that
hinders its acceptance, attendees said, is the
lack of debuggers, browsers and a full de-
t environment for the language.
"1 would like to use C-- in the next six
months because there are a lot of clear ad-
vantages, but. if the tools aren't there it
won't do us much good," said Siemens'
Bishop.

ing funetions also can be critical to the