An Intelligent CASE Tool for the Jackson System Development Method

ESPRIT Project 510 (“ToolUse”) is conducting research into method-drivenapproaches to software development. A particular area of interest is the development of tools to actively assist in the application of software development methods. This paper describes the JSD Advisor, a knowledge-based prototype tool supporting the Jackson System Development (JSD) method. Active support for the JSD method is made possible by the incorporation of both method and application domain knowledge in the Advisor knowledge base. The method knowledge takes the form of an explicit JSD development rule set. The application domain knowledge takes the form of an explicit application domain model. The role of application domain modelling within the software development process is discussed. An assessment of the JSD Advisor is given. This research led to the development of the commercial product GenASSIST, an intelligent CASE tool supporting JSD.