Object-oriented development is a partial-lifecycle software development method in which the decomposition of a system is based upon the concept of an object. This method is fundamentally different from traditional functional approaches to design and serves to help manage the complexity of massive software-intensive systems. The author examines the process of object-oriented development as well as the influences upon this approach from advances in abstraction mechanisms, programming languages, and hardware. The concept of an object is central to object-oriented development and so the properties of an object are discussed. The mapping of object-oriented techniques to Ada using a design case study is considered.

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Object-oriented development

Formal methods used in developing computer systems (i.e. mathematically based techniques for describing system properties) are defined, and their role is delineated. Formal specification languages, which provide the formal method's mathematical basis, are examined. Certain pragmatic concerns about formal methods and their users, uses, and characteristics are discussed. Six well-known or commonly used formal methods are illustrated by simple examples. They are Z, VDM, Larch, temporal logic, CSP, and transition axioms. >

A specifier's introduction to formal methods

A discussion is presented of the two primary ways of understanding software costs. The black-box or influence-function approach provides useful experimental and observational insights on the relative software productivity and quality leverage of various management, technical, environmental, and personnel options. The glass-box or cost distribution approach helps identify strategies for integrated software productivity and quality improvement programs using such structures as the value chain and the software productivity opportunity tree. The individual strategies for improving software productivity are identified. Issues related to software costs and controlling them are examined and discussed. It is pointed out that a good framework of techniques exists for controlling software budgets, schedules, and work completed, but that a great deal of further progress is needed to provide an overall set of planning and control techniques covering software product qualities and end-user system objectives. >

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Understanding and controlling software costs

This article discusses avenues of improving productivity for both custom and mass-produced software. Some of the topics covered are: The importance of improving software productivity, measuring software productivity, analyzing software productivity, improving and indicating trends in software productivity

Improving Software Productivity

Software safety issues become important when computers are used to control real-time, safety-critical processes. This survey attempts to explain why there is a problem, what the problem is, and what is known about how to solve it. Since this is a relatively new software research area, emphasis is placed on delineating the outstanding issues and research topics.

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Software safety: why, what, and how

SREM has been extended. Now a requirements-driven modelfor integrated software engineering environments, SREM has new tools to support its application, the Distributed Computing Design System. Since its development and initial presentation in 1976, Software Requirements Engineering Methodology, or SREM, technology has evolved in both application and research. ' The methodology and tools have matured to a point where they are being used on a variety of projects at a number of different locations; the research that led to SREM has been extended to address the problems of specifying system-level requirements and defining a distributed or uniprocessor design that satisfies requirements generated with SREM. This article overviews developments in these areas and summarizes their results. It also describes the origins of SREM, its basic model of requirements, and how the model is implemented in RSL, the Requirements Statement Language, and supporting software.

Alford

Papers

SREM at the Age of Eight; The Distributed Computing Design System