Supporting Software Maintenance Processes in TEMPO

We will show in this article how Tempo, a process-centered software engineering environment (SEE), assists in cooperative work by means of an approach based on a communication model. We will describe the executable formalisme used to define software engineering activities, and we will show how contraints related to the use of objects in these activities are expressed using the role concept. We will then present our communication model. Thanks to this model, strategies governing the cooperation between various software processes are specified by the concept of active, programmable connections. A connection is a communication channel that links two roles. Message exchange is controlled using TECA rules (Temporal event-condition-action rules), executed by a trigger mechanism. These allow for programming of synchronization strategies between processes, propagating the effects of an executed action on one or more connection points. The temporary modes of TECA rules allow for transactions of..