MetaEdit+: A Fully Configurable Multi-User and Multi-Tool CASE and CAME Environment

Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) environments have spread at a lower pace than expected. One reason for this is the immaturity of existing environments in supporting development in-the-large and by-many and their inability to address the varying needs of the software developers. In this paper we report on the development of a next generation CASE environment called MetaEdit+. The environment seeks to overcome all the above deficiencies, but in particular pays attention to catering for the varying needs of the software developers. MetaEdit+ is a multi-method, multi-tool platform for both CASE and Computer Aided Method Engineering (CAME). As a CASE tool it establishes a versatile and powerful multi-tool environment which enables flexible creation, maintenance, manipulation, retrieval and representation of design information among multiple developers. As a CAME environment it offers an easy-to-use yet powerful environment for method specification, integration, management and re-use. The paper explains the motivation for developing MetaEdit+, its design goals and philosophy and discusses the functionality of the CAME tools.

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