An Object-Oriented Graphical Editor for Distributed Application Development

The increasing use of distributed computer systems leads to an increasing need for distributed applications. Their development in various domains like office automation or computer integrated manufacturing is not sufficiently supported by current techniques. New software engineering concepts are needed in the three areas ‘languages’, ‘tools’, and ‘environments’. We believe that objectoriented techniques and graphics support are key approaches to major achievements in all three areas. As a consequence, we developed a universal objectoriented graphical editor ODE as one of our basic tools (tool building tool). ODE is based on the object-oriented paradigm, with some important extensions like built-in object relations. It has an extensible functional language which allows for customization of the editor. ODE was developed as part of DOCASE, a software production environment for distributed applications. The basic ideas of DOCASE will be presented and the requirements for ODE will be pointed out. Then ODE will be described in detail, followed by a sample customization of ODE: the one for the DOCASE design language.