CASE tool for reusable software component storage and retrieval in rapid prototyping

Rapid prototyping has become an accepted software development method to construct and adapt software, validate and refine requirements, and check the consistency of proposed designs rapidly. A computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tool is described that is used in conjunction with the Computer Aided Prototyping System (CAPS), which will retrieve reusable components from a software base using a given specification. The specification language used is the Prototype System Description Language (PSDL). Reusable Ada components will be stored in an object-oriented database management system with an appropriate PSDL specification. Each component's PSDL specification will be normalized to facilitate search retrieval. The database architecture, specification normalization, and matching techniques are described.