The development of knowledge embeddedness in CASE technologies within organizations

This study aimed to evaluate 2 advanced methods for presurgical calculation of bilateral alveolar cleft defect volume using 3-dimensional (3D) printing and computer-aided engineering (CAE) software. Twelve patients with bilateral alveolar cleft (4 females, 8 males, age range 8-11 years) were enrolled in the study. All patients underwent preoperative helical computed tomography scans, and the digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) data of the computed tomography images were analyzed using 3D printing and CAE software. The 3D-printed model used a simulated graft, and graft volume was measured by water displacement. The CAE software used a subtractive method to calculate volume. Simulated graft volumes and CAE-software-derived volumes were compared using Pearson's correlation test and paired Student's t-test. The average volume of the simulated bone grafts obtained using 3D-printed models was 1.45 mL, which was lower than the CAE-software-derived mean volume of 1.52 mL. The mean calculation time using the 3D-printed model was 51.5 minutes, which was 32.1 minutes longer than the average 19.4 minutes when using CAE software. Paired Student's t-test revealed no statistically significant difference between the volumes derived from these methods. The results of this study further validated the use of 3D printing and CAE technique in bilateral alveolar defect repair. The CAE software is more cost-effective in presurgical volumetric assessment. Moreover, 3D models overcome limitations of 3D visualizations by providing tactile feedback and superior appreciation of visuospatial relationships among anatomical structures.

A framework is formulated for the design and development of a user friendly CAE (computer aided engineering) package for drive system dynamics. The authors describe the design principles and algorithms of such a modular CAE package and its implementation on a personal computer. An effort has been made to fill the need for an interactive simulation to assess the torque ripple, losses, efficiency, torque and speed responses, and their bandwidth, as well as the suitability of the drive system for a specific application. One such CAE package, PMBD, has been developed, and key results using the package are presented to highlight the implemented features. Various user friendly features and dynamic and steady-state analysis results are described in detail. >

Opportunities and Obstacles in the Use of Case Technology: A Romanian Perspective

This paper describes a course developed to teach software design with a focus on the use of computer-aided software engineering (CASE) environments. Commercial CASE tools were acquired and used in a classroom environment in response to the needs expressed by local industry. The paper assesses the benefits and problems associated with placing emphasis on CASE tools in a software engineering course. Using mature CASE environments brings one kind of realism to the students' project experience, but the complexity of learning a design methodology and complex tools places limits on the scope of design projects that can be assigned. Design recovery tools show promise for helping students learn design principles. In addition, assignments in which students carried out independent assessments of various CASE tools were found to be very valuable opportunities for students to practice written and oral expression, in addition to broadening their knowledge of CASE.

Performing rigorous analysis of parallel and distributed systems (PDS) specifications is one of the important tasks during the early stages of development. The ambiguities and errors left unchecked during the analysis phase can creep into design and development phases, resulting in cost and schedule overruns and a less reliable end product. Commercial off the shelf CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) tools can play an important role in the analysis and design phases. However techniques must be developed to address the shortcomings of CASE tools. A set of such techniques is presented in this paper. CASE tools can be used to gather PDS specifications in the form of analysis models. The techniques presented in this paper deal with the problem of performing rigorous analysis of PDS specifications originally developed using a CASE tool. The approach is based on integrating a CASE tool with a verification tool based on coloured Petri nets (CPNs). CPNs can be used to model and analyze concurrency in specifications and design phases. Dynamic simulations of CPN models can be used to conduct performance/performability analysis as well as risk assessment studies.

This study investigates the job satisfaction of information technology (IT) professionals in an environment where computer aided software engineering (CASE) tools are used. Although the recent downturn in the economy might have temporarily eased the IT labor shortage, issues of recruitment and retention of qualified personnel are key to the success of IS development projects. This study presents a model of the combination of CASE tool usage and job satisfaction as related to internal career orientation. Two hypotheses based on this model were tested using empirical evidence collected through a survey method. The first examines whether the career orientation of IS personnel influences their job satisfaction. The second incorporates the impact of CASE tool usage on this relationship. The results indicate that in a CASE tool environment, personnel with a predominant technical career orientation have more job satisfaction than those with a predominant managerial tation. However, there is a significant and positive synergy between the sophistication of the CASE tool used and managerial competence orientation leading to higher job satisfaction. These findings indicate that combating the IT personnel shortage through task automation may also increase worker satisfaction, thereby decreasing turnover. Careful selection of the CASE tool for use may result in this win-win situation.

Standardization is intended to overcome the last hurdle in the integration of computer aided software engineering (CASE) in an open system environment. Since there are numerous CASE and CASE related standard efforts currently under development on national and international levels, there is a wide spectrum of overlapping CASE standards research that must be identified and evaluated as to its specific present and future implications. Primarily the effects of CASE standards as they pertain to CASE vendors and users are discussed, along with the integration options of modern system development environments. >

Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) Tools is a set of software that results in high-quality and maintainable software products. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is one of the most commonly used CASE tools for analyzing and expressing software requirements. Considerably, UML overcomes ambiguity limitation which results from infamous shortcoming of national language. However, how to express requirements of E-Commerce System is still a very challenging problem. In this paper, requirement analysis is highlighted by IBM Rational Rose and Microsoft Visio, and typical E-Commerce system by UML is investigated as well. At the end, a guideline generated for Jewellery E-Commerce (JEC) is presented by UML use cases, activity diagrams, and data flow diagrams in details.

In a ubiquitous computing environment, computer-aided engineering (CAE) software packages can be encapsulated as a service and be accessible through networks, which is essential to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for complex product design with limited computing resources. In this paper, a web service-based platform for the multi-disciplinary collaborative simulation (MDCSS) is proposed, which is a software-sharing environment. In MDCSS, although the CAE software packages reside in their remote application program servers, they are registered in the service center to be accessible according to the computing requests. Given the increasing CAE services with the same function, a quality of service (QoS)-aware scheduling method with real-time and countable parameters is proposed to adaptively select the most efficient web service among alternatives. Through an additional layer and an application broker for service scheduling, MDCSS allows allocating services automatically, keeping load balance, and minimizing human intervention. This platform is reusable, scalable, and efficient for implementation, which enables the end user to invoke the remote CAE software ubiquitously in a “pay-as-you-use” fashion.

In this paper, a generic computer aided software engineering (CASE) tool builder MetaBuilder is proposed and described in detail. It is a graph-driven tool, not only for CASE application projects but for new methodology and new CASE tool design. MetaBuilder provides the following functionality: a rapid CASE tool developing environment for users to create new or modify old methodologies in graph manipulations; an integration platform for users to plug their own programs into MetaBuilder to realise their own special functionality; a central repository and a set of graphic user interface (GUI) classes for resource reuse that can greatly lighten users' developing work, shorten users' learning and developing time; and finally, a hierarchical design mechanism and a flexible type definition method based on nested graph structures for large and complex CASE methodology and application project design. All generated tools are integrated due to our unique data model. The implementation of MetaBuilder is also presented.

Over the last dozen years, computer-aided software engineering (CASE) has continued to evolve and improve, but so has the state of software development research and its application in the commercial marketplace. What James Martin, in 1989, called “industrial-strength” CASE, was almost entirely PC-based. It was not even close to the two- and three-tier CASE architectures of 1996.

Integrating software modelling and prototyping tools

Recent research on software development environments (SDE) and computer-aided software engineering (CASE) have not addressed the issue of multiple environments. This paper presents an approach for developing an integrated modelling environment (IME) that supports the maintenance of software environment models in software engineering. The approach uses the notion of a composite software development environment maintaining multiple software development environments. The composite is specified by analysing and identifying common features from other environments. These other environments include various government-supported efforts. The idea of a common software development environment may be supported in part by several different international standards or technical approaches (e.g. CAIS, CAIS-A, PCTE, ALMA/metasystems, object-oriented systems, and so forth). Some of these ways are outlined in the paper. An analysis of them in case study form is presented.

Modelling of I-CASE Platform

Chapter 2 - Software Development Tools