Gipsy: Generating Integrated Process Support Systems Project Overview

Cooperative software engineering requires integration of a distributed and heterogeneous world of actors and resources. Component technology will augment integration problems due to distributed development of large numbers of interoperating components. Extensible Attribute Grammars (EAG) are used for the specification and generation of highly integrated tool components that support the software process. Tool components are plugged into a process support framework which allows for the distributed definition and enactment of a software process. A common understanding of the process is provided by a 3D process model which supports tool integration on a high level so that developers perceive the tools as a homogeneous environment. INTRODUCTION The goal of a software process is the development or maintenance of a software product. This process takes place in a complex, distributed and heterogeneous world of actors and resources (people, computers, tools, process data, network services, etc.), which have to be integrated and coordinated. An IPSE (Integrated Process Support Environment) [5] is a set of tool components that are plugged together to form a cohesive environment. Its strength lies in supporting the more formal tasks of cooperation within a process. This includes formal process definition, enactment and control, version and configuration management. While the process members' technical competence, creativity and their capability to cooperate in an informal way still remain very important to the success of a process [18], IPSEs support the execution of a software process efficiently and are essential for processes of a certain complexity. Nevertheless, IPSEs are not as widely accep ted by software developers as they should be. One reason is the fact that the user's perception of an IPSE is not as homogeneous as it should be, because there are many aspects of tool integration.