Integration mechanisms in ALF, a process model-based project support environment

A key issue in computer-aided software engineering environments is to make tools communicate, cooperate and share data in order to carry out the various activities of a software process. The integration mechanisms and facilities provided by the host structure of a CASE environment are becoming indispensable factors for the environment quality. The authors address the integration issue and the corresponding mechanisms as they have been approached in a large European Esprit project: ALF. They introduce the problems of integration in software process-based CASE environments. They give an overview of integration mechanisms provided by PCTE, the ALF hosting platform. Afterwards, they present integration concepts and mechanisms as tackled in the ALF project. Finally, the solutions adopted in ALF are discussed against the ECMA reference model for CASE environment frameworks