Computer-aided software engineering in a computer supported cooperative environment

Most of today's applications have been targeted at making individuals more productive. It is common, however, for several individuals to collaborate on a project. Computers support the individual work done by group members but provide only token support for group interaction. There is a need for new tools that provide an environment where a group can cooperate on a project. Most work done in this area has thus far been targeted toward office automation and communication. However, there has been very little done to provide a group tool that supports the engineering design process. The objective of the CSCW project is to provide an environment that supports this process. In particular, this environment provides collaborative tools that support CAD and CASE. A CSCW environment has been developed by a team of faculty and students at Auburn University. This system is an expansion of an earlier project that focused on collaborative writing, called Distributed Collaborative Writing Aid. The CSCW project has added support for CAD and CASE. This paper discusses the method used to implement the CASE support. In particular, it addresses how group members can simultaneously work on coding a program and then integrate their work.