Intelligent Software Engineering Environment

Abstract

To help people enjoy the benefit of using the SOFL formal engineering method, software support tools are extremely important. The combination of condition data flow diagrams and the textual language for defining their components in the associated modules provides good comprehensibility of the entire specification and allows people at different levels of software projects to work together smoothly, but drawing condition data flow diagrams can be time consuming, especially when the diagrams need frequent changes during the construction of specifications. Furthermore, all the activities involved in the SOFL process, including the capturing of informal user requirements, transformation from informal to semi-formal and then to formal specifications, verification and validation of various level specifications and programs, and process management usually take time and effort and may result in high cost. To resolve these problems, a quality software engineering environment for SOFL is necessary and useful. In this chapter, we discuss the issues concerned with the building of software engineering environments.