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| 2 Reference Model of an SDE |
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2.1 Preliminary Structure of an SDE Reference Model
Within the scope of the Development Standard for IT Systems of the Federal Republic of Germany, the term "SDE" (Software Development Environment) is defined as follows:
| An SDE represents the total of all technical resources utilized for the professional software development. |
Resources making up an actual SDE are-among other things-hardware, system software (like operating systems and office communication systems), and-above all-software development tools (in short "tools"). A tool used in connection with the development of software is defined as follows:
| A tool is a software product supporting the generation or maintenance/modification of software. |
A tool can also support the application of other tools (example: development database).
An SDE may be considered as a DP system that makes available DP-technical services for the corresponding user1.
A reference model of an SDE puts all technical DP services that are offered by an SDE into a basic schema. The fundamental units of such a reference model are referred to in the following as service units. The service units of the reference model of an SDE structure the software part of an SDE from the user's point of view and also represent the reference elements for the specification of tool requirements. This can be realized by means of the definition of actual tool requirements to the service units. Therefore, a tool can be considered as software realizing the requirements of one or several service units. Service units having matching content are combined into service complexes.2
The following Entity Relationship (E/R) model (Figure 2.1) illustrates the interconnection between requirement, service unit, and tool.
A future-oriented SDE ought to
- present itself to the user across all its tool components with a uniform user interface;
- be based on a data management system that can be utilized to store all information generated during the software development process. The data management takes care of a regular exchange of information between the individual tool components. Furthermore, all information to be stored in this connection is cross-checked with regard to integrity, consistency, and completeness. The data management stores object-related information;
- include components for guaranteeing the security (confidentiality and integrity of information and availability of information and resources);
- include a control component so the integrated tools can communicate with each other in a simple way, a tool might thus initialize another tool to further process the generated results1;
- cover predominantly the entire scope of the V-Model;
- guarantee a vertical integrity of the individual components, i. e. it must be possible to reuse the generated results of an individual component by other individual components later on.
Figure 2.1: Interconnection of Requirement, Tool and Service Unit
The logic-functional structure of the SDE to service units prevents a precipitate concentration of an actual SDE on certain features, like
- allocation of tasks to staff in charge of functions,
- allocation of SDE performance to hosts or workstations,
- conception of existing, manufacturer-oriented tool support,
- a defined security level,
- a specified understanding of security (which is independent of applications),
- the decomposition of security functions into set security mechanisms.
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Last Updated 10.Feb.1999 |