Flexible CASE and hypertext

Software design environments can and should be improved to serve better the needs of system developers. Emphasis should be placed on providing convivi al support for knowledge structures echoing those found in the human mind. This paper describes an overall research cycle to determine how and to what extent the functionality of software design environments can be improved b y using hypertext. It conceives a hypertext implementation for a full-blown CASE environment. Hypertext is incorporated into CASE tools as generic sup port functionality. A hypertext-based design rationale tool is also develop ed. These together integrate different degrees of information structures, a nd thus can support different uses of design information by individuals and groups. Generic objects and forms of hypertext of this kind improve the fl exibility of software design environments.