Computer Aided Maintenance of Prototype Systems

Author-contributed print itemThe problems of software maintenance are magnified in rapid prototyping because prototypes are subject to frequent and repeated changes. This paper presents the concepts and mechanisms used to support such changes based on component specification in the rapid prototyping software life cycle. The prototype system description language PSDL and the associated Computer Aided Prototyping System (CAPS) are used to illustrate these concepts. The prototyping language has been designed to make all interactions between components explicit, so that it is easy to determine the impact of a proposed change. It also has requirements tracing facilities which allow easy identification of the parts of the prototype system affected by a proposed requirements change. The computer aided prototyping system achieves efficient construction of prototype systems via reusable software components. The effort of analyzing and modifying code in software maintenance is minimized by means of searching, changing and composing the reusable components based on their specifications. The facilities provided for adapting reusable components to particular applications are also useful for making small modifications to the behavior of the prototype system without affecting the lowest levels of the implementation