Kazuo Matsumura

Software reuse: is it delivering?

A panel discussion is presented to examine the evidence, pro and con, that software reuse is delivering. Verifiable and repeatable increases in software quality and productivity in field settings are used as criteria for the success of reuse. Reusability is defined as a technology that can be of significant value to software development and maintenance. A scale to evaluate whether reuse is delivering is outlined. The scale is ordinal, with five being the best possible rating. The three respondents, from Germany, Japan, and the US, discuss how reuse, as defined, is delivering in their parts of the world.<<ETX>>

An Application of Structural Modeling to Software Requirements Analysis and Design

In software development, it has been pointed out that software engineers must pay attention to software requirements definition. One of the important problems in software engineering is to rationalize the processes from requirements definition to design. Computer tools are most useful and efficient for this purpose. This paper proposes a computer-aided software design system (CASDS), which supports software engineers with a series of structural modeling. As is well-known in systems planning, structural modeling helps to extract concepts from many fuzzy requirements. This system contains three structural modeling methods. They are used 1) to determine functional terms from fuzzy software requirements, 2) to obtain modules by structuring the functions with respect to the data flows, and 3) to make a program skeleton by imposing control flows on the functional elements obtained by breaking down the modules.

Visual Man-Machine Interface for Program Design and Production

Along with the development of new computer input/output devices and with the diversification in computer users (both laymen and experts, beginners and skilled technicians, and so on), there is a growing demand for highly functional man-machine interfaces. And this interface is required to closely resemble the communication between man and man. To realize this, the machine may be made to possess man’s common knowledge, making implicit communication possible. Or the conversational expressing power between man and machine must be greatly reinforced. Visual interface is intended to be highly instrumental in adopting this latter approach.

An application of structural modeling and automated reasoning to real-time systems design

This paper presents an application of structural modeling and automated reasoning as a software development environment for real-time systems. This application satisfies two major requirements for such an environment: (1) to synthesize an absolutely correct program and, (2) to increase software productivity. The real-time systems, which consist of concurrent programs, are described by a Prolog based concurrent object-oriented language, called MENDEL/87. As a typical concurrent program consists of two parts: functional and synchronization parts; the functional part in the reusable component to be registered in a library will be generated by a structural modeling through the use of structuring functions with respect to data flows. The synchronization part will be synthesized from temporal logic specifications by the use of an automated reasoning mechanism. This paper also describes the MENDELS ZONE implemented on a Prolog machine, which is the working base for the presented application method.

An application of structural modeling and automated reasoning to concurrent program design

An application of structural modeling and automated reasoning as an intelligent software development environment for concurrent programs is presented. This application, using an integration of software reuse and theorem-proving methods, synthesizes an absolutely correct program and increases software productivity. The concurrent programs are described by a Prolog-based concurrent object-oriented language called MENDEL/87. The functional part of the reusable component is generated by structural modeling, and the synchronization part is synthesized from temporal-logic specifications by the use of an automated-reasoning mechanism. A description is also given of the MENDELS ZONE, implemented on a Prolog machine, which is the working base of the method.<<ETX>>