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University of California, Davis

Application Development Methodology

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Rapid Application Development (RAD)

Characteristics of Integrated CASE Tools

Integrated CASE software should provide the following capabilities:

• Enable the user to draw diagrams on a desktop screen for planning, analysis, design, and code-generation phases.
• Solicit information about the objects in the diagram and the relationships among them, gradually accumulating a complete set of information.
• Store the meaning of the diagram (not the diagram itself) in a repository.
• Check the diagram for accuracy, integrity, and completeness. Users should choose diagram types that facilitate such checking.
• Enable the user to employ many types of diagrams, each representing a different facet of an analysis or design.
• Enable the user to draw program procedures with diagrams that show conditions, loops, case structures, and other constructs of structural programming.
• Enforce structured modeling and design of a type that allows for thorough accuracy and consistency checking.
• Coordinate the information in multiple diagrams, checking for consistency among them and for accuracy, integrity, and completeness in the diagrams as a group.
• Store the information accumulated on the desktop machine in a central repository, thus ensuring consistency among the work of multiple analysts and designers. A repository stores the knowledge from the multiple tools in an integrated manner.
• For each development activity (i.e., planning, analysis, design, and construction), integrated CASE supplies a software workbench with multiple tools. The tools are fully integrated, each one directly employing information from the others.
• A code generator is fully integrated with the design toolset (as opposed to having a code generator with a different syntax that must be connected to the design toolset via a bridge).
• The code generator automatically produces the required database statements and job control language.
• Code is generated and compiled on a desktop machine, and can then be tested in the target environment with the requisite operating system and database management system.
• The desktop toolset enables developers to design a system (or part of a system) and then quickly generate code, test it, and modify it, repeating this cycle until the system is judged satisfactory.
• The toolset supports rapid prototyping, including screen painting, dialog prototyping, report generation, and full transaction prototyping.
• Prototypes produced during the development process need not be thrown away, but rather can be used as parts of the finished system.
• Integrated CASE tools support all phases of the project life cycle in an integrated manner.
• In addition to supporting individual project life cycles, an integrated CASE toolkit supports enterprise-wide planning, data modeling and process modeling, which create a cohesive framework for multiple development projects. The toolkit supports the broad approach of information engineering, rather than merely software engineering.
• The planning, analysis, and design workbenches of CASE support user workshop techniques such as Joint Requirements Planning (JRP) and Joint Application Design (JAD).
• Integrated CASE tools generate thorough documentation automatically.
• The toolkit allows highly complex systems to be divided into less complex systems, which can then be developed by separate small teams. The interfaces among the separate systems are defined with precision in the repository.