Observations from a prototype implementation of the Common APSE Interface Set (CAIS)

This paper presents an overview of the Common Ada Programming Support Environment (APSE) Interface Set (CAIS), its purpose, and its history. The paper describes an internal research and development effort at the Mitre Corporation to implement a prototype version of the current CAIS specification and to rehost existing Ada software development tools onto the CAIS prototype. Based on this effort, observations are made on the maturity and functionality of the CAIS. These observations support the government's current policy of publicizing the CAIS specification as a baseline for public review in support of its evolution into a standard which can be mandated for use as Ada is today

Transportability, distributability and rehosting experience with a kernel operating system interface set

For the past two years, PRC has been transporting and installing a software engineering environment framework, the Automated Product control Environment (APCE), at a number of PRC and government sites on a variety of different hardware. The APCE was designed using a layered architecture which is based on a standardized set of interfaces to host system services. This interface set called the APCE Interface Set (AIS), was designed to support many of the same goals as the Common Ada Programming Support Environment (APSE) Interface Set (CAIS). The APCE was developed to provide support for the full software lifecycle. Specific requirements of the APCE design included: automation of labor intensive administrative and logistical tasks: freedom for project team members to use existing tools: maximum transportability for APCE programs, interoperability of APCE database data, and distributability of both processes and data: and maximum performance on a wide variety of operating systems. A brief description is given of the APCE and AIS, a comparison of the AIS and CAIS both in terms of functionality and of philosophy and approach and a presentation of PRC's experience in rehosting AIS and transporting APCE programs and project data. Conclusions are drawn from this experience with respect to both the CAIS efforts and Space Station plans

Notes on the Next Generation Software Factory

Almost twenty years have passed since the first software factory started operations. From his firsthand experiences, the author introduces a typical software factory model currently being used in Japan's software factories. A project called Japanese Software Factory of the Next Generation (JSF/NEXT), which is headed up by the author, has started to work out a new software factory model. The project aims to create an extension of current software factory models in order to meet recent needs for information system-integration and software productivity/quality improvement

Developing and integrating tools in Eclipse/PCTE

The whole area of software engineering environments is an emerging one. Such environments have become necessary due to the rapid changes which have occurred in the software industry in the last twenty years. The desire is to produce products of high quality and at a reasonable cost. Unfortunately history shows that, in general, software systems rarely met the specific need for which they were developed and were often unreliable, inefficient , poorly documented and required considerable maintenance. One of the main areas of research into increasing both the productivity and the quality of software has been the use of software engineering environments. The area of software engineering environments is a changing one with evolving definitions. What can be stated is that a key objective of software engineering environments is the support of software process from requirements definition through to system maintenance. Such support can only be provided through the development of integrated sets of tools each supporting various aspects of the software development process. In order for tools to be fully integrated and have the same ’look and feel’ it is necessary that they are developed on a common platform, providing all the facilities needed for tool development and integration. Such a platform is the Eclipse tool builder’s kit based on the Portable Common Tool Environment (PCTE). The work in this thesis was based on an evaluation of this development platform for developing and integrating software tools, particularly real-time telecommunications software tools. The work in this thesis was carried out as part of the European Community’s RACE programme. The project was called SPECS 1. The SPECS project is outlined in chapter one of this thesis along with a brief history of the research into software engineering environments to date. The work which I was responsible for involved both the integration of existing toolsets and tools, developed by other partners in the SPECS project, as well as the development of new "native" tools within Eclipse/PCTE. This work was necessary so that the SPECS project could produce an integrated set of tools at the end of its research. It was my job to evaluate the potential of Eclipse/PCTE as a basis for this integration

Proceedings of Tenth Annual Software Engineering Workshop

Papers are presented on the following topics: measurement of software technology, recent studies of the Software Engineering Lab, software management tools, expert systems, error seeding as a program validation technique, software quality assurance, software engineering environments (including knowledge-based environments), the Distributed Computing Design System, and various Ada experiments

Space station systems: A bibliography with indexes (supplement 9)

This bibliography lists 1,313 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between January 1, 1989 and June 30, 1989. Its purpose is to provide helpful information to researchers, designers and managers engaged in Space Station technology development and mission design. Coverage includes documents that define major systems and subsystems related to structures and dynamic control, electronics and power supplies, propulsion, and payload integration. In addition, orbital construction methods, servicing and support requirements, procedures and operations, and missions for the current and future Space Station are included