An Interactive and Automated Software Development Environment.

The purpose of this investigation is to define both the detailed requirements and the preliminary design for an automated and interactive software development environment, and develop an initial implementation of that environment. The specified requirements for this environment emphasize the need to support the entire software life-cycle as a continuous and iterative process. In particular, the concepts of integration, traceability, flexibility, and user-friendliness are accentuated. The preliminary design delineates the high level design specifications, configurations schemes, and generic tool categories with which the previously mentioned requirements may be satisfied. Detailed designs are developed for the integrating interfacecontroller sub-system and the development data storage scheme for the initial implementation of the environment. The interfacecontroller sub-system has been implemented and testing using the DEC Command Language DCL and PASCAL. This sub-system is integrated with an initial software development tool set executing on the VAX-11780 computer using the VMS operating system. This initial implementation, called the Software Development Workbench SDW, is an extremely effective and easy to use aid for extending the cognitive and notational powers of the software developer. Author