cb538@city.ac.uk (cb538) (11/13/89)
Dear Newsgroup, At the last occam user group I proposed the formation of a "Graphical program development tools" Sig. As the suggestion didn't meet with quite the hilarity I anticipated (Six people were genuinely interested) I decided to test the water with the following short piece. Anyone interested in the formation of the Sig may contact me at the address above/below. Comments (pleasant and otherwise on the general area across the grapevine also invited). What is a graphical program development tool ? Graphical program development tools do, as their name implies, use graphics in the program development process. Many experimental tools have been produced for use in all stages of the sequential software lifecycle ranging from high level project management systems to low level tools using graphics in the programming process. As yet however, few have been produced for parallel systems though many feel that graphical tools may help in that "Holy grail" of parallel processing - the export of parallel systems and languages into the so called real world. They fall naturally into two main areas - program visualisation tools and visual programming tools. Program visualisation is the use of computer graphics to enhance program presentation and facilitate the visualisation, understanding and effective use of programs by humans. Visual programnming on the other hand is a collection of related techniques through which algorithms are expressed using various graphical representations. In short Programming Visualisation shows aspects of the program graphically, where as visual programming makes use of graphics as the program input medium. For initial informed introductions to both areas see [Myers88] and [Shu88]. But can such methods aid concurrent programming ? I think that they can. Most of the reasons behind the adoption of graphics based programming tools centre on increasing the use of the left side of our brains, little used in the programming process at present. With the increased software complexity often shown in concurrent programs, it makes sense to bring as much of our underutilised brains as is possible to bear upon the task. Several recent reports from within the occam community ([Crowe89] [Moulin89] [Roberts89] [Stephenson88] [Stepney87]) demonstrate the viability of such tools and can be seen as supporting this opinion. If sufficient interest is expressed by members of the O.U.G., I will orgainise an initial SIG at the Exeter technical meeting. Mike Roberts, The Centre for Information Engineering, City University, Northampton Sq., London EC1V OHB. By email: M.ROBERTS@uk.ac.city (From Janet) Biblography [Myers88] Myers B.A., "The State of the Art in Visual Programming and Program Visualisation", Report No. CMU-CS-88-144, Computer Science Dept, Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburg, P.A., USA. (Presented at the British Computer Society Display's Group's Symposium on Visual Programming and Program Visualisation, London, England, March 16, 1988) [Shu88] Shu, Nan C., "Visual Programming", Van Nostrand Reinhold (New York), ISBN 0-442-28014-9, 1988. [Crowe89] Crowe, W.D., Hasspn, R., Strain-Clark, P.E.D., "A CASE tool for designing deadlock free OCCAM programs", OUG-11 - Developing Transputer Applications, Proceedings of the 11th OCCAM User Group Technical Meeting, Edinburgh, Scotland, September 25- 26, 1989. (John Wexler(ed.)) [Mourlin89] Mourlin, F., "Graphical Environment for OCCAM Programming", Occam User Group newsletter, No. 11, July 1989. [Roberts89] Roberts M. & Samwell P.M, "A Visual Programming System for the Development of Parallel Software", Proceedings of the Second International Conferance on Software Engineering for Real Time Systems (IEE), Cirencester, U.K., September 18-20, 1989. [Stephenson88] Stephenson M., Boudillet, O., "GECKO: A Graphical Tool for the modeling and Manipulation of Occam Software and Transputer Hardware Toplogies", OUG-9 - OCCAM and the Transputer - Research and Applications, Proceedings of the 9th OCCAM Users Group Technical Meeting, Southampton, U.K., 19-21 September, 1988. (Charlie Askew(ed.)) [Stepney87] Stepney S., "GRAIL : Graphical Representation of Activity, Interconnection and Loading", OPPT 7th Occam Users Group International Workshop on Parallel Programming of Transputer Based Machines, Grenoble, France, September 14-16, 1987. (T. Muntean(Ed.)) (Also submitted to the newsletter, as not everyone reads their mail !!)