A MODEL FOR SUPPORTING MULTIPLE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING METHODS IN A SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENT

This dissertation describes a computer based system, TRIAD, which can provide a support environment for a wide variety of software engineering methods. It is based on a uniform model of such methods and this makes it simple and natural to apply several different methods simultaneously to the same software development project. Since most existing methods are really well suited to only a few phases of the software development cycle, this ability to form sophisticated information-sharing combinations of several methods is a significant advance.;A description of the structure and operators of the TRIAD Model is provided. Also described are the features of the TRIAD Model which represent the structure of method, and in addition, the meaning of the structure and the rules for the use of the method.;Since the TRIAD generated environment is more than just a method representation and a tool collection, this dissertation describes the components of the TRIAD environment. These components include an editor, an information storage and retrieval facility, help and tutorial systems, an external tool interface, an interface to a programming language to provide procedural processing and a rule based invocation of external procedures. Each of these components and their contribution to multiple method support is described.;A general description of the TRIAD Model implementation is provided as well as the presentation and solution to difficult problems encountered during the implementation.;Examples from methods such as Jackson, SADT, Dataflow Diagrams and Call Structures motivate the features included in the model. A multiple method environment generated to support the development of TRIAD is described. Two methods, Call Structure and Documentation, will illustrate how software engineering methods are defined to generate a TRIAD environment as well as how they are applied in the development of the TRIAD system.