Date of Award

3-1993

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Paul D. Bailor, PhD

Abstract

This research designed and prototyped a visual system interface to generate, display, and modify domain-oriented application specifications. A visual system interface, called the Architect Visual System Interface (AVSI), supplements a text-based environment, called Architect, previously developed by two other students. Using canonical formal specifications of domain objects, Architect rapidly composes these specifications into a software application and executes a prototype of that application as a means to demonstrate its correctness before any programming language specific code is generated. This thesis investigates visual techniques for populating, manipulating, viewing, and composing these software application specifications within the formal object base scheme required by Architect. A Visual Specification Language (VSL) was developed to define the visual display characteristics of domain objects. AVSI provides automatic diagram layout, and also produces a textual display in a domain specific language. The Software Refinery environment, including its graphical interface tool INTERVISTA, Was used to develop techniques for visualizing application data and for manipulating the formal object base. AVSI was validated with a well-understood domain, digital logic, and was found to significantly enhance Architect's application composition process.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GCS-ENG-93M-05

DTIC Accession Number

ADA262489

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

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