MDAY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator, Mark S. Day) (01/11/88)
Soft-Eng Digest Sun, 10 Jan 88 Volume 4 : Issue 1
Today's Topics:
Obtaining User Requirements
Looking for References to Saving Money and Time (2 msgs)
Separating Algorithm from Functionality and Implementation
EMACS' Learnability and Usability
Looking for Documents on Software Documentation
Tektronix CASE tools
CASE Tools
References on CASE
DIAC-88 Call for Papers
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Date: 8 Jan 88 15:26:20 GMT
From: beach.cis.ufl.edu!hbh@bikini.cis.ufl.edu (Hillard Holbrook)
Subject: Obtaining User Requirements
I'm working on a master's thesis and am intrested in getting any
prescriptions for effectively establishing a set of user requirements that
you may be aware of. I'm not so much intrested in methods for recording these
requirements as I am the techniques for getting them (interviewing and stuff
like that).
Anyhow, if you could e-mail them to me, if there is enough response,
I'll post the results. Many thanks in advance.
Hilliard Holbrook hbh@beach.cis.ufl.edu
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Date: 7 Dec 87 17:41:17 GMT
From: necntc!culdev1!drw@ames.arpa (Dale Worley)
Subject: Looking for References to Saving Money and Time
At present I'm trying to get a manager to look at improved software
development methods. She believes that what are considered "improved"
methods just increase the time and money required to finish the
project. (She previously worked at a government contractor; this may
have something to do with her attitudes.) I need to find references
to both (1) software companies (preferably in the Boston area) that do
things right, and (2) real examples of projects that saved time and
money doing things right.
Please e-mail replies. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Dale
--
Dale Worley Cullinet Software ARPA: culdev1!drw@eddie.mit.edu
UUCP: ...!seismo!harvard!mit-eddie!culdev1!drw
Nothing shocks me -- I'm a scientist.
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Date: 10 Dec 87 21:31:24 GMT
From: rion@ford-wdl1.arpa (Rion Cassidy)
Subject: Looking for References to Saving Money and Time
A couple of months ago I went a seminar put on by a local ACM chapter.
The speaker was Tom Gilb, and from the course material I have found
what I believe some of the more significant references.
M. E. Fagan, "Design and Code Inspection to reduce errors in program
development" IBM systems Journal, 15, No. 3, 1976.
Mills,Hardin,Dyer,Michael,Quinnan: Articles on Evolutionary Delivery,
IBM Systems Journal, No. 4, 1980.
Wong Carolyn, "A Successful Software Development", IEEE Transactions
of Software Engineering, Nov. 1984.
Gilb, Tom,"Software Engineering using Design by Objectives", ACM
Software Engineering Notes, April 1984, pp.104-113.
Rion Cassidy
rion@ford-wdl1.arpa
...{sgi,sun,ucbvax}!wdl1!rion
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Date: 5 Jan 88 20:09:15 GMT
From: hp-pcd!uoregon!omepd!littlei!ogcvax!pase@hplabs.hp.com (Douglas M. Pase)
Subject: Separating Algorithm from Functionality and Implementation
I have been exposed to a (small) number of different approaches to software
engineering in both commercial and academic settings. However, it has been
a few years, and even so I was not satisfied with the approaches I used.
The approaches I used divided the software development into two parts: the
function, and the implementation. This was usually reflected by having a
functional document of some type, which spelled out the intended functionality
and requirements of the software. The second part was the documented code.
Different approaches had different formats for the information, and some
variation of the exact material to be included.
It seems more appropriate to divide the process into three sections --
functionality, *algorithm*, and implementation. In the previous approaches,
the algorithm was not adequately serviced in either document, and was often
divided between the two.
QUESTION: Does anyone know of an approach which *does* deal with each part
separately? I am hoping for material which is readily available (articles
or books which are well known) rather than commercial products or obscure
titles.
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Date: Wed 2 Dec 87 12:48:15-PST
From: Andy Freeman <ANDY@Sushi.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: EMACS' learnability and usability
dan@WILMA.BBN.COM (in Soft-Eng Digest V3 #17) wrote:
EMACS is inherently hard to learn, and difficult to use effectively
once you do learn it unless you use it all the time.
I don't know about the latter, as I've never gone more than three
months without using EMACS (it was no more difficult to use than
anything else after that time), but I disagree with the former. I
didn't find Twenex EMACS* inherently hard to learn. I learned enough
and switched to it (from TV-Edit in the mid 70s) within a few hours
after I first ran it. I used 20 commands for the first few years and
may know as many as 50 now. (I'm not counting self-inserting commands
like "a" in either case.) I doubt that I've looked at the manual 20
times; I don't own one.
dan continues:
Its key bindings violate some basic rules about good user interface
design. To name two: first, its many commands are not organized in a
way that makes them easy to remember, so you need to use apropos,
help, etc. to find them. Second, some commands which do drastic
things to your buffer are only one or two keystrokes long and easily
"found" accidentally; an unpleasant experience even with undo.
EMACS' ~20 basic movement and text manipulation commands are fairly
easy to remember; basic buffer manipulation requires another 5
commands. The commands that I use 90% of the time (and used to use
all of the time) are adequately organized; it doesn't disturb me that
it requires some work to find and use the other 10,000 commands,
especially since it doesn't require much work. Apropos makes them
available for one time use as necessary.
In short, I wish all of my tools were as bad as Twenex EMACS. Intro
students here pick it up quickly.
-andy
* - Twenex EMACS is a TOPS-20/Tenex EMACS derived from Stallman's ITS
EMACS.
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Date: 11 Dec 87 09:15:21 GMT
From: mcvax!inria!imag!jarwa@uunet.uu.net (Jarwa Sahar)
Subject: Looking for Documents on Software Documentation
I am very interested in all publications concerning Documents
Related to Software Documentation and to Maintenance Environment.
What I am interested in are papers on different types
of these documents, their formalism and their structure.
If this area also interest you, I'd be very pleased if you could
contact me, or send me your papers and/or what you have found
interesting pertaining to this area. This will help me making a
preliminary study on it.
Looking forward to your answer, and thank you for your help.
Sahar JARWA
My adress is
Sahar JARWAH
Equipe "Systemes Intelligents de Recherche d'Informations"
Laboratoire de Genie Informatique - IMAG
BP 68
38462 St Martin d'Heres Cedex
FRANCE
my phone is 76-51-46-00 extension 5182
my electronic adress is jarwa@imag.imag.fr
on UUCP: jarwa@imag
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Date: 18 Dec 87 18:06:48 GMT
From: ssdevo.dec.com!marks@decwrl.dec.com (Randy Marks DTN 522-2718)
Subject: Tektronix CASE tools
My software engineering group is considering the purchase of Tektronix
CASE tools. I would like to hear from people who have had experience
using these software engineering tools. None of us have working
experience with CASE tools, so it is difficult to know what questions
to ask of the sales engineers. We need a system that runs on DEC hardware
and VMS, and the Tek tools meet that need.
I would be interested to hear about positive and negative aspects of their
CASE tools. How responsive is Tek to requests for bug fixes and enhancements?
Randy Marks
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Date: 6 Jan 88 18:58:07 GMT
From: trwrb!aero!polack@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Alexander J. Polack)
Subject: CASE tools
I have received a number of calls and E-Mail messages in response to my
original comment that I have done an evaluation of CASE tools.
Most people want a copy of a report. Unfortunately, the full report is
not available to public at present time.
In a very near future (1-2 months) I am planning to publish an
abbreviated version of the report including the evaluation methodology.
Bellow are some excerpts from my article that should give some indication of
what I have done.
The following tools were evaluated:
TekCASE
Teamwork
Software Through Pictures
DesignAid
Exelerator
TAGS
Statemate
In my evaluation I've looked into the following areas:
1. Methodologies the tool supports.
2. Platforms (workstations) and Operating Systems it supports.
3. Ease of use.
4. Ease of learning
5. Tool robustness
6. Its interface with other tools.
7. User interface.
8. Quality of support.
The above list is NOT in the order of importance. However, I did concentrate
on the "front end" parts of the software development cycle (analysis/design),
considered ONLY tools that run on the 32 bit workstations with high resolution
bit-mapped graphics displays that run multi-tasking/multi-user operating
systems.
I placed the issue of methodology support at the top of the list, since
"a tool is just that - a tool". Very often if a tool does not support some
useful methodology that can be taught by experts, it quickly becomes a very
expensive graphic tool, and produces a very large number of dissatisfied
users.
When it becomes possible, I will let this group know where and when my
report is being published.
Regards,
Alex Polack
(213)373-5723
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Date: Fri Dec 18 16:27:28 1987
From: dmartin <hermix!dmartin@rand-unix.arpa>
Subject: References on CASE
It's still hard to find many good writings on the subject of CASE, isn't it?
Following are a few scattered references related to the subjects of CASE and
Automatic Programming. My perspective is that the two fields really need
to be treated together, or more accurately, that what people are calling CASE
is really just a subset of what people have been calling Automatic Programming
(i.e., the part that's currently useable in a commercial tool).
My preference would be to consolidate these two fields, but to retain the name
Computer-AIDED Software Engineering, in recognition that the process of
developing software probably will never become fully "automatic".
I give my highest possible rating to the Winograd/Flores book, for anyone
desiring an insightful and stimulating highest-level perspective on
all sorts of issues relating to computer use.
The volume edited by Rich and Waters is currently the most complete source
discussing efforts in Automatic Programming.
A couple of these references I haven't actually seen.
Balzer, Robert, ``A 15 Year Perspective on Automatic Programming'', (and other
articles of interest) in IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING,
Vol. SE-11, No. 11, Nov. 1985.
Case, Albert: INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT: PRINCIPLES OF C.A.S.E.
Frenkel, Karen A., ``Toward Automating the Software-Development Cycle'', in
COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM, Vol. 28, No. 6, June 1985.
Index Technology Corp., Cambridge, Mass.: Proceedings are available from
CASE conference(s) they've sponsored.
Mostow, Jack: ``What is AI? And What Does It Have to Do with Software
Engineering?'', editor's forward to IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING,
Vol. SE-11, No. 11, Nov. 1985.
Rich, Charles, and Waters, Richard C. (eds.): READINGS IN ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING. Los Altos, California: Morgan
Kaufmann, 1986.
Wegner, Peter, ed.: RESEARCH DIRECTIONS IN SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY.
Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
SOFTWARE NEWS, Nov. 1986. (Entire issue on Automated Software Development.)
Winograd, Terry, and Flores, Fernando: UNDERSTANDING COMPUTERS AND
COGNITION. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing, 1986.
David Martin
Mark V Business Systems (Builders of a CASE tool, "Adagen")
16400 Ventura Blvd., #303
Encino, CA 91436
ARPANET: hermix!dmartin@rand-unix.arpa
UUCP: dmartin@hermix.uucp
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Date: Wed, 2 Dec 87 07:27:00 pst
From: bcsaic!douglas@june.cs.washington.edu
Subject: DIAC-88 Call for Papers
Call for Papers
DIRECTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF ADVANCED COMPUTING
DIAC-88 St. Paul, Minnesota August 21, 1988
The adoption of current computing technology, and of technologies that seem
likely to emerge in the near future, will have a significant impact on the
military, on financial affairs, on privacy and civil liberty, on the medical
and educational professions, and on commerce and business.
The aim of the symposium is to consider these influences in a social, economic,
and political context as well as a technical one. The directions and
implications of current computing technology, including artificial intelligence
and other areas, make attempts to separate science and policy unrealistic. We
therefore solicit papers that directly address the wide range of ethical and
moral questions that lie at the intersection of science and policy.
Within this broad context, we request papers that address the following
suggested topics. The scope of the topics includes, but is not limited to, the
sub-topics listed.
RESEARCH DIRECTIONS DEFENSE APPLICATIONS
+ Ethical Issues in Computing Research + AI and the Conduct of War
+ Research Funding - Sources and Effects + Limits to the Automation of War
+ Responsible Software Development + Automated Defense Systems
COMPUTING IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY COMPUTERS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
+ Community Access + Computing for the Handicapped
+ Computerized Voting + Resource Modeling
+ Civil Liberties + Arbitration and Conflict Resolution
+ Risks of the New Technology + Software and the Professions
+ Computing and the Future of Work + Software Safety
Submissions will be read by members of the program committee, with the
assistance of outside referees. The program committee includes Stephen Berlin
(A.I. Architects), Jonathan Jacky (U. WA), Richard Ladner (U. WA), Bev
Littlewood (City U., London) Nancy Leveson (UCI), Peter Neumann (SRI), Luca
Simoncini (U. Reggio Calabria, Italy), Lucy Suchman (Xerox PARC), Terry
Winograd (Stanford), and Elaine Weyuker (NYU).
Complete papers, not exceeding 6000 words, should include an abstract, and a
heading indicating to which topic it relates. Reports on in-progress or
suggested directions for future work will be given equal consideration with
completed work. Submissions will be judged on clarity, insight, significance,
and originality. Papers (4 copies) are due by April 1, 1988. Notices of
acceptance or rejection will be mailed by June 1, 1988. Camera ready copy is
due by July 1, 1988. Send papers to Professor Nancy Leveson, ICS Department,
University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92717.
Proceedings will be distributed at the symposium, and will be available during
the 1988 AAAI conference. The DIAC-87 proceedings are being published by
Ablex. Publishing the DIAC-88 proceedings is planned. The program committee
will select a set of papers to be considered for publication in the
Communications of the ACM.
For further information contact Nancy Leveson (714-856-5517) or Doug Schuler
(206-865-3226).
Sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
P.O. Box 717
Palo Alto, CA 94301
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End of Soft-Eng Digest
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