Re: Case Tools

In article <jdennisCw126L.6qz@netcom.com>, jdennis@netcom.com (John Dennis) writes: |> |> My company is a small company quickly turning into a large one. We have |> no case tool or methodolgy in place. Our current "case tool" is ERWin |> and MS-Word. Not pretty! We are looking at IDE's Software through Pictures. |> I was wondering if: I get a little nervous when anyone wants to make decisions on tools before methodology. Kind of like buying a car before deciding how many people it must hold, where it's going to go, and how fast it must get there. Some required decisions: -- methods-- OO vs Structured Decomp (process models) If OO, Information engineering verses class decomposition approaches Do you want a dynamic simulation capability (executable requirements model)? --support-- Will you have anyone to support the tool environment? --use-- Big, medium, small, projects. Concurrent access to project databases? Code/schema generation from tools? Documentation approach/generation? Specific observations: Structured methods: Have used Essential Systems Analysis rigorously on one big program. System model became very costly to maintain as coupling is high between processes in a thread. Supports testing and simulation nicely. OO Methods: We like Shlaer-Mellor OOA because of it's rigor. Rumbaugh is more flexible/less rigorous (I used it for my graduate work), Booch maps nicely to C++, haven't used it. Haven't delivered anything big using these. Tools: -STP, Cadre, Rational Rose etc are good life-cycle tools for larger project teams that support multiple methodologies. We have a love-hate with Cadre (like what Winston Churchill said about democracy: "It's the worst form of government possible, except for all the others.") -Paradigm Plus (acquired??), Mark V and the like require nurture to use for a complete project life-cycle. - Very nice Shlaer-Mellor tool from Objective Spectrum (919-460-1500). I like it a lot, but have only evaluated it on a small problem. (So many tools, so little time:-) - SES ObjectBench is moving from Simulation World to support Shlaer-Mellor, nice tool. -Single user tools are very capable and cost effective, but are single user; we don't look at these.