DATABASE REQUIREMENTS FOR A SOFTWARE ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT - CRITERIA AND EMPIRICAL-EVALUATION

The paper identifies the criteria that a database in a software engine ering environment for large-scale system development should satisfy, a nd it discusses how GemStone, an object-oriented database manager, mee ts them. The criteria are derived from the requirements of software en gineering rather than database technology. The criteria include suppor t for (1) consistent data in a concurrent environment; (2) data integr ity; (3) basic and complex data types; (4) data access by the end user s; (5) configuration management; (6) tool development; (7) documentati on; and (8) traceability for consistency and completeness checking. Th e discussion of GemStone is based on experiences with using it for dev eloping a software maintenance tool. GemStone supports consistency and some concurrency and integrity and provides direct access to the data base suitable for use by the software tool developer rather than the s oftware engineer. It also supports extensibility and reusability well, but the software tool developer is responsible to create objects and methods that support documentation, version control for configuration management, complex data types, and traceability.