IDE's Leading OO Environment - Software through Pictures for the Object Modeling Technique (StP/OMT) - Ready For Corporate IS; StP/OMT outselling competitors 2 to 1; first to add key features for corporate IS developers; Use Case Editor enables business process modeling; full support for Booch available within 90 days.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 17, 1994--Interactive Development Environments (IDE) today introduced the second generation of its highly successful Software through Pictures for the Object Modeling Technique (StP/OMT) object-oriented (OO) analysis, design, and code generation toolset which has been enhanced to meet the needs of IS organizations transitioning to large-scale, mission-critical, object-oriented (OO) software development.

Since its introduction last year, StP/OMT has quickly established a dominant market position among all tools automating OO methodologies, outselling its nearest competition two to one. StP/OMT automates the design and implementation of object-oriented applications using a combination of today's most popular methodologies: the Object Modeling Technique (OMT) and Jacobson Use Cases (both available today), and the Booch methodology (available January 95).

Software through Pictures supports all of these methods via its unique core architecture and a single shared repository. IDE continues to provide a customer driven software development environment, enabling organizations to choose and combine the most popular OO methodologies. As these and other methodologies evolve, IDE will be the first to address their evolution or convergence.

StP/OMT 2.0, available immediately, provides support for business process modeling through Jacobson Use Cases, a new addition to object methodologies that many experts feel is critical to making object orientation viable for mainstream IS developers. The new release also now provides the industry's most complete automatic code generation for both Smalltalk and Ada source code, as well as C++.

Use Cases Model Business Process For End Users

"Use Cases have enabled us to model our business processes in a way that is both highly functional and understandable by non-technical end-users," said Terry McLane, Head of Technology, William Mercer, Inc., the largest benefits management company in the world and a major user of StP/OMT. "With Use Cases, users see the system do exactly what they want it to do, and along the way, our business objects naturally fall out."

StP/OMT's new Use Case Editor enables developers to model business processes graphically using scenarios that are easily understood by end users. "After reuse, experts talk about improved communications with end users as the chief benefit of OO, but when you start building larger applications, end users don't have a prayer for comprehending the traditional object model," said Chris Kenber, IDE's President and CEO.

Use case models, on the other hand, provide an external, user-centered view of the system that actually models real-world business processes from the point of view of end users. StP/OMT thus enables developers to capture high-level requirements and ensure that the mapping of business policies to application development is consistent. In addition, decomposition of use cases into prototypical scenarios helps verify that user requirements have been correctly interpreted.

IDE was able to implement Use Cases rapidly, according to Chris Kenber, because the Software through Pictures architecture, which supports structured and information modeling as well, is methodology independent.

Thus, unlike many products which are rooted to a specific OO methodology, Software through Pictures is well positioned to support the inevitable convergence of OO methodologies without requiring customers to engage in major migration efforts. IDE recognized the convergence of OO methods, and will provide support for popular methodologies as customer requirements demand. IDE will provide full support for the Booch Method by January 31, 1995.

Smalltalk Code Generation, Requirements Management, and Other New Features

StP/OMT now integrates with VisualWorks from ParcPlace Systems, Inc. The integration between StP/OMT and VisualWorks allows corporate developers to create business object models that serve as the foundation for Smalltalk applications. This integration provides users of StP/OMT with full forward and reverse engineering of Smalltalk code and enables developers to build analysis and design models before beginning applications development in Smalltalk, C++ or Ada.

"Thus", said Kenber, "a prototype developed with StP/OMT, or captured with StP/OMT 2.0 Smalltalk class capture, can be the starting point for subsequent development. Developers can construct an OMT model, generate Smalltalk code, fine-tune the code as desired, then reverse engineer the design into StP/OMT for further development in a variety of programming languages: Smalltalk, C++ or Ada."

The StP/OMT class capture capability enables developers to reuse existing Smalltalk classes in new models, allowing for development of systems that must maintain consistent interfaces to legacy code or reusable component libraries.

Other important new features in StP/OMT 2.0 include:

-- Requirements management: The industry's only requirements table editor supports rules and business policies, and helps map systems, software design and test requirements to OMT models; it also helps determine what user requirements have or have not been satisfied.

-- Requirements traceability: Transparent integration with the Marconi RTM v2.3 product provides complete requirements traceability.

-- Timing constraints: The industry's first support for real-time extensions, facilitating the capture and expression of real-time requirements as well as support simulation and real-time behavior analysis.

-- Ada support: Full incremental source code generation for the Ada-83 language that provides a path towards adoption of OO programming with Ada 9X.

-- Automatic test case generation: Integration with the recently announced StP/T product enables automatic generation of test cases.

OO Demands New Development Paradigm

"Corporate software developers have been in a tough bind," said Kenber. "They've been told the only viable method for developing next generation software is through objects, but the automated design and implementation tools they need to develop anything bigger than a small pilot haven't been ready for primetime.

"Even the object purists agree that IS developers will get themselves into a bigger mess than ever if they simply rely on a C++ compiler to create OO applications without analysis and design. The need for these tools is even greater when it comes to the complexity of distributed client/server systems."

StP/OMT supports the key elements most organizations need to ensure reuse and other benefits of OO: a shared repository for referenceable, reusable objects and database components; support for an established object methodology and business object models that promote process automation; and robust integrated design and analysis tools.

"It's not just a matter of picking up a new language, it's a whole new development paradigm that virtually necessitates rigorous, up-front analysis and design," said Kenber.

"Virtually all of the organizations that have initiated large, complex projects without doing that planning work have either failed or seriously regretted their decision. The IS legacy is clear: the waterfall development process didn't work so well for structured programming languages, but it is guaranteed to fail for object programming."

Another key StP/OMT capability that has already been widely adopted by IS users is the tool's integration with IDE's StP/IM information modeling tool. Many companies have used StP/IM to model their relational databases and generate SQL, then used StP/OMT to build their applications.

The Unification and Convergence of OO Methodologies

Both Rumbaugh and Booch have acknowledged the similarities and complementary capabilities of their respective methods. It is clear that giving the customer the option of using either method offers users a full range of object-oriented expression. Software through Pictures will provide support for the Booch methodology in a separate release, available January 31, 1995.

Documentation supporting the use of OMT and Booch together will also be available at that time. This represents the first step in the evolution towards a unified industry-standard OO method. Until such a standard is completely defined, IDE will provide its customers with a choice of state-of-the-art modeling techniques, enabling them to use either OMT or Booch via a single, shared repository.

Pricing and Availability

StP/OMT 2.0 is available immediately for Sun SPARC systems running SunOS and Solaris and HP9000 700/800 systems running HP-UX, and is priced at $12,000 per license.

IDE

Interactive Development Environments (IDE), located in San Francisco, was founded in 1983 with a mission to improve the systems development process. The company has effectively combined this vision with technology leadership, partnership with other industry leaders, and a strong commitment to customer service.

Today, IDE has more than 15,000 users in 25 countries on five continents. IDE's customers include American Airlines, AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and DHL. IDE's headquarters is at 595 Market Street, 10th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105. Phone [phone]. -0-

Note to Editors: Software through Pictures and the IDE logo are registered trademarks of Interactive Development Environments Inc. All other company and product names are the trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: IDE, San Francisco

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