SDA: A novel approach to software environment design and construction

A Software Designer's Associate (SDA) is a workstation-based collection of tools which support: 1) the description, evaluation and comparison of software system architectural designs, and 2) cooperation among, and management of, a team of software designers [Ridd87]. Each Software Designer's Associate is a specific instance of a generic facility which supports a team member's design activities, cooperation among team members, and overall team management. It provides a framework for the integration of tools supporting the use of various notations within the context of a particular set of technical and managerial methods. These tools, notations and methods may be adapted to support the needs of a particular project or the habits of an individual developer by selecting the particular tools to be added to the generic facility. The Software Designer's Associate project is a joint effort involving a consortium of researchers from academic and industrial organizations in both Japan and the United States. This paper describes the concept of Software Designer's Associates and the cooperative, international project which is intended to lead to the realization of that concept.