Object-oriented have recently exploded into the software engineering arena, and show great potential in reducing software costs by increasing programmer productivity, enhancing softwareq uality, and promoting reusable software. Each of these methodologies offers different features and domains of applicability. Interoperation of these methodologies looms as acritical technical problem as more organizations switch to thispromising technology and encounter problems of mixing variousparadigms within and across enterprises.We propose to study and evaluate existing technical approaches tothis problem, and the general mechanisms available forenvironment integration and process interoperability. Theevaluation will help validate the design of a CASE framework thatwill feature both internal and external integration. We aim touse this framework in the design of a commercial product thatwill foster interoperation of object-oriented methodologies bysemantic integration of tools that support individualmethodologies.In addition to internal integration of different methodologieswithin our environment, we will devise object-oriented extensionsto the existing CASE Data Interchange Format (CDIF) and presentour interfaces to the CDIF Standards Committee to foster externaluse.Commercial Applications:Commercial applications includeobject-oriented CASE tools, reverse-engineering of existingprograms, online search support for reusable software componentsfrom existing libraries, tools for CALS-compliant documentationof software.
