Integrating automated structured analysis and design with Ada programming support environments

Ada Programming Support Environments (APSE) include many powerful tools that address the implementation of Ada code. These tools do not address the entire software development process. Structured analysis is a methodology that addresses the creation of complete and accurate system specifications. Structured design takes a specification and derives a plan to decompose the system subcomponents, and provides heuristics to optimize the software design to minimize errors and maintenance. It can also produce the creation of useable modules. Studies have shown that most software errors result from poor system specifications, and that these errors also become more expensive to fix as the development process continues. Structured analysis and design help to uncover error in the early stages of development. The APSE tools help to insure that the code produced is correct, and aid in finding obscure coding errors. However, they do not have the capability to detect errors in specifications or to detect poor designs. An automated system for structured analysis and design TEAMWORK, which can be integrated with an APSE to support software systems development from specification through implementation is described. These tools completement each other to help developers improve quality and productivity, as well as to reduce development and maintenance costs. Complete system documentation and reusable code also resultss from the use of these tools. Integrating an APSE with automated tools for structured analysis and design provide capabilities and advantages beyond those realized with any of these systems used by themselves

Digital libraries and minority languages

Digital libraries have a pivotal role to play in the preservation and maintenance of international cultures in general and minority languages in particular. This paper outlines a software tool for building digital libraries that is well adapted for creating and distributing local information collections in minority languages, and describes some contexts in which it is used. The system can make multilingual documents available in structured collections and allows them to be accessed via multilingual interfaces. It is issued under a free open-source licence, which encourages participatory design of the software, and an end-user interface allows community-based localization of the various language interfaces - of which there are many

LabVIEW application with embedded Lua scripting for a laser based measuring machine

Published ArticleThis paper presents the work on the development of software for an industrial laser based measuring machine. The goal being not only for a working application, but also to optimise the development process and ease future maintenance of the software. LabVIEW with its graphical method of programming allows engineers to easily create large software applications to control industrial processes and machines. This software if not properly designed can lead to stability and maintenance problems. The experience gained from developing, maintaining and improving a LabVIEW application for a laser measuring machine, results in the integration of the Lua scripting language into LabVIEW. It is shown how the embedded Lua allows the LabVIEW software application for the machine to be structured for simpler development and maintenance

Maintenance Logistics Management: A Survey Study in the Moroccan Industrial Context

Global logistics system performance could not be achieved without an available intern logistics system for production systems.  Indeed, availability is the fastest path to performance where maintenance logistics occupies the central role.In this paper we define a systemic framework for maintenance logistics to manage all maintenance resources and their interactions.  In order to define main maintenance logistics management problems we conducted a structured survey study in the Moroccan industrial context. The study presents results based on 152 surveys responses from 281 surveys addressed to different industrial production systems. Results analysed on SPSS statistical software revealed an insufficient involvement level for production operator and insufficient organisation level for maintenance logistics environment. Therefore we propose a new sustainable model conception based on empirical conclusions. Keywords— Maintenance logistics system; management model; Operator involvement; maintenance logistics environment; SPSS software; maintenance improvement

Software maintenance: redocumentation of existing Cobol systems using hypertext technology

One of the major problems associated with the maintenance of existing software systems is their lack of documentation. This can make very large, poorly structured programs very difficult to maintain. Nearly all traditional documentation tools are either designed for use in the development stage of the software lifecycle or are report generators such as cross reference generators. The problems of lack of documentation are compounded when applied to third party software maintenance as the staffs are often initially unfamiliar with the code they are maintaining. This thesis describes these problems in detail and evaluates the feasibility of a tool to help with redocumentation based on current hypertext technology

An Object-Oriented Approach to Writing Computational Electromagnetics Codes

Presently, most computer software development in the Computational Electromagnetics (CEM) community employs the structured programming paradigm, particularly using the Fortran language. Other segments of the software community began switching to an Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm in recent years to help ease design and development of highly complex codes. This paper examines design of a time-domain numerical analysis CEM code using the OOP paradigm, comparing OOP code and structured programming code in terms of software maintenance, portability, flexibility, and speed