Interactive Development Environments Inc and Saber Software Inc have teamed up to offer what Interactive vice-president Michael Thorma claims is a fully integrated software engineering environment for application development in C. Interactive’s Software Through Pictures toolset will be linked to the Saber-C programming environment, allowing software engineers to do analysis, design and documentation using the Interactive package, then develop, test and de-bug code using Saber’s software. Interactive is also working on object-orientated Ada and C++ modules for Pictures – it expects Saber to be offering a C++ environment within a year – and is also examining the possibility of adding SSADM to the US-favoured Yourdon design methodology it already supports. Interactive is currently working to get Pictures running under X Window on the various hardware systems it supports – Sun, Hewlett-Packard/Apollo and DEC – and says the next generation of Pictures software will also support a range of Unix graphical user interfaces. On the subject of a European-wide standard system design methodology, Interactive’s UK marketing manager Howard Stone says an SSADM-based model will not be adopted. He says the European Commission has no plans to standardise on a methodology as such, but will instead specify that list of deliverable items be supplied at the design stage – such as an analysis of input and output functions – together with a lexicon of terminology that will compare data constructs and relationships within the various popular methodologies, to show for example where a Yourdon item is comparable with an SSADM, Merise or Jackson item.
