Experiences in the implementation of a process-centered software engineering environment using object-oriented technology

Software engineering environments (SEEs) pose complex and critical requirements to the supporting repositories. Object-oriented Database Management Systems (ODBMSs) are expected to provide suitable features to successfully address these issues. SPADE is a process-centered SEE being developed at CEFRIEL and Politecnico di Milano. SPADE is built on top of an OODBMS and features process modeling and enactment, management of process data and facilities to integrate development tools. This article reports the experiences gained by the authors in defining the requirements for SPADE's process data repository, and in assessing six different OODBMSs against these requirements. The assessment has been carried out through several prototypes and within the context of the ESPRIT project GoodStep.