Software Development Tools: A Profile

Conclusions reached at the IEEE Testing and Documentation Workshop indicated a need for a public information exchange on software development tools. Two reasons were cited: the first is a general lack of information about the tools available, their capabilities, and where they can be obtained; the second is a lack of awareness of current tool development, which leads to duplication of effort. At the workshop, the US National Bureau of Standards´ Institute for Computer Science and Technology, or NBS/ICST, agreed to initiate the collection of information about software tools in the hope of alleviating some of these problems. This article reports the results of this collection effort by analyzing the information obtained. Various categorizations of the tools are presented, with classes listed by their characteristics. The lists incorporate percentage summaries based on the total number of tools for which information is available.