What is Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE)

1. Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE)

Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) is the automation of software engineering. Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) technology is a promising solution for the major problems of the low productivity and low quality in software development. High software productivity and high software quality and key issues for competition, and even survival in the present decade.

Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) is a tool for software engineering. The basic philosophy behind Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) is to provide a set of well integrated labor saving tools that link and automatic all phases of the software life cycle. The structured methodologies for software engineering are very tedious and require a lot of manual effort. These activities, like all other manual activities, can be automated; Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) makes this possible.

The usage of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) has made software development less tedious and error free. Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools relieve the developers of all tedious activities, leaving them free for other tasks. Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) has automated the drawing of diagram. This has made standard drawings faster and easy to modify.

Computer Aided Software Engineering (Case) attacks software productivity problems at both ends of the life cycle by automating many analysis and designs tasks as well as construction, Implemention and maintenance tasks.

Several vendors have developed several Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. Some examples of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools are Turbo Analyst, Information, Engineering, Workbench and Excelerator.

Given here are accounts of some companies that have achieved higher productivity by the use of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. The two mentioned here are about organization in the United States of America.

2. Introduction to Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE)

Till now you were introduced to software engineering and the automation of it- Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE). You will now be introduced to the different types of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. The benefits of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) will also be described.

Why Use Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) Tools

The fact that Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools greatly contribute to the system development life cycle can no longer be questioned. The graphs illustrated in the following figures show why Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools are becoming increasingly popular.

With the use of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE), the system analysis and systems design processes are done much faster and more accurately. As a result of this, the programmers productivity also improves. Firstly, the programmers does not have to spend most of his time fixing errors that occurred due to poor analysis and design. Secondly, many Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) products provide tools for automation of the construction stage. The contribution of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) to system development life cycle (SDLC) is described later in this module.

Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools support the drawing of entity relationship diagrams. Since Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools assist in making the design of the database, the entity relationship model is drawn to greater detail and the data of the enterprise is carefully examined before storing it. Thus, with the use of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) the data is designed to be stable and has greater value.

Since the database design is more accurate with the use of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE), issues like the time to respond to new requests by users is greatly reduced. Besides, if the table structures are simple, the end users can perform interactive queries and his/her dependence on program also fails.

Using Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) in SDLC

Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools can be in every phase of the system development life cycle (SDLC).

The ideal Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool is composed of:

UPPER CASE

LOWER CASE

Upper CASE: Upper CASE tools help the system analyst and system designer, i.e., software engineers involved in the analysis and design phases of SDLC. They are also known as ‘front end’ tools or ‘up stream’ tools. They provide automation for the front end activities.

Upper CASE tools are most popular, Th emphasis in today’s system development projects is on the analysis and design phases. This is primarily because the most serious and expensive errors occur in the early stages of software development. Besides, statistics show that 60% of development time and effort is spent during the analysis and design phases. Coding takes only 15% of project time. Testing and rework take more time and cause delays of the software system because we do such a poor job of analysis and design.

The bottom line is that if there has been a poor understanding of the user’s requirements, the best code and best testing won’t produce a high quality system; 50% errors and 80% of the cost of removing errors can be attribute to misunderstanding between the users and the software engineer during the requirements definition phase of the project.

Another reason for the popularity of Upper CASE tools in the growing popularity of a number of graphical ‘modeling’ approaches. All these methods use different ways of producing engineering drawings of a software system.

Lower CASE: Lower CASE tools aid the programmer. These tools are for activities concerning code generation and testing. The lower CASE tools automatically generate code and the database structures.

The early days, when designers used pencils and laboriously drew and redrew diagrams, and when the programmers did line by line coding in COBOL, are clearly gone.