Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) (10/30/90)
Can someone explain the relationship between Structured Analysis/Design, Rapid Prototyping, and Code Generation? I've never used a CASE environment before, but after reviewing a video tape of Index Technology's Excelerator product I was struck by the awkwardness (call it a "schism") between the SA/SD facilities and the Rapid Prototyping. It seems like the Rapid Prototype facility constructs screens based on data elements defined during the SA/SD process. However, there didn't seem to be any way to use the process flow to build the rapid prototype. Rather, it seems like the Rapid Prototype was given its own ad hoc process flow and then the programmer had to manually cross-reference different parts of his prototype to identifying numbers that corresponded to elements created earlier. The code generation then seemed to be based exclusively on the screens and flows of the prototype and not the SA/SD process flows. So my questions are two: 1) Is the above description correct? Does the process flow of the prototype get done from scratch and manually cross-referenced to the process flow of the SA/SD stage? And does the code generation rely exclusively on the prototype and not on the SA/SD work? 2) Do other vendors' tools solve this problem? How will repositories like AD/Cycle eventually change this state of affairs, or will they? Sorry if this question reveals misconceptions; as I said, I have never used a CASE tool. Thanks, Will Estes (sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Will)