The Seminar
In the winter term 1998/1999 the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE), the Software Engineering Group of the Universität Kaiserslautern (AGSE) of Prof. Rombach and the chair for Software & Systems Engineering of the TU München (Prof. Broy) held a joint seminar to evaluate and compare software development methods and their tool support. The focus of the seminar was on embedded systems where software is only part of a technical product, such as in video tape recorders, fly-by-wire aircraft or the “elk-saving” ESP.
As a case study, the students developed a Tamagotchi, starting from a list of informal textual requirements. This seemingly simple task turned out to be surprisingly complex!
Results
Eight development methods and their supporting tools were compared. The results of the seminar were presented in Munich in February 1999. (Here’s the agenda of the meeting.) Below are the presentation slides (in German only) and seminar reports:
- SDL/ObjectGeode (J. Jeitner, B. Müller, A. Wißpeintner): Slides, report
- UML/Rhapsody (Ch. Becker, S. Glomb, M. Graf): Slides, report
- SCR (R. Hettesheimer, K. Mukasa): Slides, report
- Petrinets/PEP (C. Beetz, Ch. Harböck, M. Karas): Slides, report
- Statecharts/Statemate (M. Frey, B. Schilling, W. Wagenbichler): Slides, report
- AutoFocus (F. Kunkel, A. Seitz, T. Seliger): Slides, report
- OCTOPUS/Software through Pictures (G. Landeck, E. Torres): Slides, report
- ROOM/ObjecTime (M. Fröhler, M. Gnatz, M. Kanzl): Slides, report
See also the Tamagotchi seminar page at the AGSE in Kaiserslautern.
Publications
A summary of the seminar results can be found in the following publications:
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An Empirical Investigation of Requirements Specification Languages: Detecting Defects While Formalizing Requirements
In John Krogstie, Terry Halpin and Keng Siau, editors, Information Modeling Methods and Methodologies, p. 125-147. IDEA Group Publishing, 2004.
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An Empirical Investigation of the Defect Detection Capabilities of Requirements Specification Languages
Sixth CAiSE/IFIP8.1 International Workshop on Evaluation of Modeling Methods in Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD'01), June 2001.
- [PDF]
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Eine vergleichende Fallstudie mit CASE-Werkzeugen für formale und semi-formale Beschreibungstechniken
Formale Beschreibungstechniken für verteilte Systeme, 9. GI/ITG Fachgespräch, 1999.
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Eine vergleichende Fallstudie mit CASE-Werkzeugen für objektorientierte und funktionale Modellierungstechniken
OMER Workshop Proceedings Bericht Nr. 1999-01, 1999.