A range of computer aided software engineering products claimed to be equivalent to a working model of AD/Cycle has emerged from Hungary. Developed by the Szamalk systems house, and Szki, the Computer Research and Innovation Centre in Budapest, they are being distributed in most of Western Europe by London-based Rendeck International. The German-speaking countries are already covered by the Deutsche Bundesbahn. The Softorg family is targeted at data processing departments with large mainframes running under MVS, and the distributors say that Softorg enables developers to train staff and advance their programs by a number of years. Softorg consists of six components covering three phases in the software development cycle – project and configuration management, develop-ment, and verification and validation. The company says that Softorg’s distinguishing feature is its project management tool, Softman. It supports five interrelated management functions in project and configuration management, and these are systems planning, cost estimation, project planning, project control and configuration management. Rendek says that it will be of particular interest to large companies that base their planning on performance, since it applies factory principles to the development of software. The other Softorg products include the Sofspec specification workbench, Softcon designers workbench, Softgen program generator, Softdoc static analyser, Softest dynamic analyser, and Pcspec graphical front end. The specification workbench is one of three different subsystems that supports the system specification process. It is designed to generate textual, graphical, or tabular documents, and the specification system is based on an entity relationship model of the application. Struc-tures, elements, and relationships are related via inverted files and may be validated in terms of consistency and completeness. The designers workbench supports the design process and provides an intermediate language to enable open-ended designs that cover database technologies. The program generator is described as a system generator.
Cobol, PL/I and Natural
It can generate modules in Cobol, PL/I, and Natural, in addition to data descriptions generated as separate source members to be copied into the modules. Maps may be generated for CICS and IMS, and for database systems, there are VSAM, IMS, IDMS, and Adabas Natural descriptions. As regards connections to the operating system, these include DOS/VSE, VM, and MVS control procedures, and Softgen generates test procedures for both modules and system. The static analyser records interconnections between the modules and checks the consistency of the parameters. The dynamic analyser performs a static verification of the programs by using an analyser called Softest which is a system for structural testing and produces a series of reports. The graphical front end is said to offer the graphics capability of a personal computer along with the functionality of a mainframe. It provides a graphic format for application planning, analysis, and design, and is fully integrated with the Sofspec workbench. Softorg uses VSAM files as storage media, and will use DB2 in the near future to provide the option of eventually using the Repository as the storage system. Rendek says that this would enable users to migrate the contents of Softorg storage into the repository, leaving the surrounding Softorg components for project management and software development. The cost of each component ranges from UKP19,000 to UKP41,000, while the price for the total range is UKP190,000.
