od@sunbim.UUCP (Olivier Declerfayt) (01/02/90)
I have two questions related to Real-Time SA and CASE tools to start
1990 (by the way, Happy New Year Everybody):
1. What is the current status of ESML (and ESML+)?
Is ESML gaining wide acceptance as standard notation for RT/SA
encompssing good ideas coming from Ward/Mellor and Hatley/Pirbhai?
Is ESML taking into account hierarchical finite state machines like
Harel's Statecharts?
What is the latest reference about it?
2. Are there any references (books, paper, experiments, experiences)
about RT/SA specification volume wrt the size of a project.
If one takes for example the number of source lines, duration and
staffing, one can have "metrics" like (taken from Managing the System
Life Cycle, Ed. Yourdon, 1988):
- Trivial: up to 1,000 lines, a person, a few weeks, no formal
project management techniques
- Simple: up to 10,000 lines, 3 or 4 programmer-analysts, 6-12
months, some kind of project management, methods not always
used
- Difficult: up to 100,000 lines, 5-10 programmes-analysts, 2-3
years, formal project organization and development
methods often used
- Complex: up to 1,000,000 lines, 50-100 persons, 3-5 years
- Nearly impossible
- Utterly absurd
If one takes this simple classification, does it exist corresponding
figures about the size of the dataflow diagrams tree(s) (average # of
processes per diag, # of decomposition levels), average # of flow per
process, size of the controlflow diagrams tree (Hatley/Pirbhai terminology),
# and size of finite state machines, # of data stores, complexity of data
definitions, etc
What are typical sizes of the repository (data dictionnary) for popular
systems such as IDE's StP, Cadre's Teamwork, ... (workstation products),
Excelerator, IEW, IEF, ... (PC products)?
How long can it take to check the whole data dictionnary (balancing,
undefined elements, ...)?
Are there any figures to characterize the relative time spent on
analysis (with RT/SA) and the time spent on design (Ada flavor of
OOD) for each of these classes of projects?
Thank you for your inputs. Please feel free to answer directly by mail.
In any case, I'll summarize on the net.
------------------------
Olivier Declerfayt
BIM sa/nv E-mail: od@sunbim.be , ...!mcvax!prlbcom!sunbim!od
Kwikstraat 4 Phone: +32 2 759 59 25
B-3078 Everberg Fax: +32 2 759 47 95
Belgium Tx: 63518
------------------------