Introduction
System analysis and design process is a complex process. It requires a careful steps and planning. Methodologies and approaches has been developed to systematically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of this process so it can better support and be aligned with the business needs.
The emergence of personal computer has enabled the broader adoption of CASE tools which were previously only available on commonly very expensive mainframe. Many vendors has developed a broad variety of CASE tools ranging from the narrowes to tho the full specification of CASE tool.
Because of the wide selection available on the market right now, managers of organization need to wisely select the appropriate CASE tool for their organizational need. Although the CASE tools being evaluated is not very extensive, this online paper is intended to give an overview and a initial thought on selecting the a CASE tool.
Case Tool
Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools is defined as software tools that provide automated support for some portion of the systems development process [1]. According to [2], CASE tool can be categorized into three categories:
- Upper CASE
- Middle CASE
- Lower CASE
Because of their similarities, sometimes Upper and Middle CASE are simply referred as Upper CASE. Generally, Upper CASE is a tool for high level view of software development whereas lower CASE is mostly being used as a tool at the programming and testing phase.
Related Works
Evaluation of CASE tools has been conducted on several academic studies. Plessis et al. [2], Zucconi et al. [5], Kitchenham et al. [6] describes on how to evaluate a case tools. It has an extensive list on how to evaluate a case tool and defines the evaluation criteria set as a guideline for managers to decide the suitable one. However, this paper didn’t compare CASE tools product currently on the market.
Similarly, Le Blanc et al. [3]
defines a method for evaluating and selecting CASE tools. Although it
lists the case tool products on the market at that time, no comparison
were made and the products were considered outdated. Budgen et al. [7]
defines a more updated method on evaluating a CASE tool. This study
suggests the use of survey so the qualitative results can be obtained.
A more formalized method in evaluating case tool is defined in ISO 14102 [8]. However, due to a limited access to this standard, this paper cannot make any comments regarding this method.
Finally, Chinn et al. [9] conducted a more relevant study, but with different type of respondents. This study compared popular case tool being used by academic community. It compared case tools by its features.
Motivation
The related works mentioned above mostly describe on how to evaluate and selecting case tools, but they didn’t evaluate CASE tools products currently available on the market. To conduct an evaluation using any of those methods would require substantial amount of funds and time which most managers considered expensive. Therefore, this study is intended to give a starting view of the current CASE tool products on the market so they can have a better understanding on which product to choose based on their organization’s need.
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