SSDE : structured software development environment

Abstract

Software engineers have identified many problem areas regarding the development of software. There is a need for improving system and program quality at design level, ensuring that design costs remain within the budget, and increasing the productivity of designers. Structured Software Development Environment (SSDE) provides the system designer with an interactive menu-driven environment, and a framework within which he can conveniently express and manipulate his proposed solution. This representation is in terms of both a conceptual model and a detailed software logic definition. Thus SSDE provides tools for both high-level (or logical) and low-level (or physical) design. It allows a user to follow his own preferred methodology rather than restricting him to one specific strategy. SSDE builds and maintains databases that record all design decisions. It provides the system designer with a mechanism whereby systems can easily be modified and new systems can evolve from similar existing systems. There are several auxiliary facilities as productivity aids. SSDE generates PASCAL code for low-level design constructs, ·full documentation of both the high- and low-level designs for inclusion in the project file, as well as a skeleton manual. The system was evaluated by a number of independent users. This exercise clearly demonstrated its success as an aid in expressing, understanding, manipulating and solving software development problems.