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From: andrea@eric.mpr.ca (Jennitta Andrea)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: re: IDE User Help
Message-ID: <1786@eric.mpr.ca>
Date: 5 Sep 89 18:08:21 GMT
Sender: news@eric.mpr.ca
Reply-To: andrea@eric.mpr.ca (Jennitta Andrea)
Organization: Microtel Pacific Research Ltd., Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Lines: 73

in Article <7540@leadsv.UUCP> (Charles R Berg) writes:
>We are becoming a rather large user of IDE's StP here, and I am looking for
>other users with whom to trade useful in-house developed utilities.  
> ...


Various techniques/tools are being developed at MPR to support our 
behavior modelling efforts using IDE's StP tool and the development
of an executable process specification language that interfaces
with the StP tool.


We have constructed the following IDE-specific utilities which we
would be willing to trade:

* A set of utilities was developed to facilitate
  access to information contained within a StP project database from across 
  a network (StP located on an Apollo; local machine is a Vax). These
  utilities provide the following functions:

  1) extract a named transform (process) specification from an IDE data flow
     diagram (*.dfe) stored on a remote file system (Apollo),
     saving it in a file stored on the local file system (Vax).

  2) enter a named transform (process) specification to an IDE data flow
     diagram (*.dfe) stored on a remote file system (Apollo)
     from a file stored on the local file system (Vax).

  3) extract a named data structure specification from an IDE data flow
     diagram (*.dse) stored on a remote file system (Apollo),
     and saves it in a file stored on the local file system (Vax).

  4) enter a named data structure specification to an IDE data flow
     diagram (*.dse) stored on a remote file system (Apollo)
     from a file stored on the local file system (Vax).

  ( NOTE that these utilities also work on the local machine).

* We have also developed (in C) an command line interface to an
  STP Version 4.1 project database, providing access to a pre-defined
  set of high level commands (which is very extensible to accommodate new
  commands).  The OML interpreter behaves like the Troll command
  line interface.

* A remote OML Interface Library has been developed (in C) which 
  allows interaction with an OML interpreter running on the Apollo 
  network from a process on the Vax network.  This interface also
  works on the local machine).

* Other miscellaneous utilities include: extensive support for troff
  generation of models; utilities to generate only the changed
  diagrams in a model; a mechanism to annotate tspecs with fixed id's;
  etc. 

We are interested in obtaining a utility which will generate the
network layer of a Data Flow Diagram System (ie. trace through
all offpage connectors to their source to provide direct
connectivity information for the lowest level transforms).

We would also be interested in obtaining a utility which will
provide the correct interpretation of a Yourdon/Demarco 
State Transition Diagram.  In version 4.1 of StP it is not possible
to generate  Data Dictionary information for a State Transition Diagram
with multiple actions associated with an event (the data base
relation STP_TRANSITION has a composite key consisting of 'fr_state:tr_event').

Jennitta Andrea
Microtel Pacific Research
8999 Nelson Way
Burnaby BC
Canada

(604) 293-5362