Charting custom route to repository readiness: IBM has no LAN-based repository, InfoSpan does; this and other tools can aid CASE commitment - computer-aided software engineering - CASE: Repository Implementation

Software Magazine, Feb, 1991 by Mary Alice Hanna

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING STANDARD

Standards is an area of concern to all data processing organizations, particularly those that deal with the federal government. Dr. Alan Goldfine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, formerly the National Bureau of Standards), Gaithersburg, Md., said that Fips 156 mandates adherence by this March 21,1991.

Goldfine is working on a project to develop tests that will determine whether a product conforms to the standards set by the American National Standards Institute (Ansi) Information Resource Dictionary System (IRDS) standard. Required by Fips 156, the Ansi IRDS standard is slated to be supported by IBM.

For now, however, the only software that approaches compliance is the InfoSpan Repository Management System (IRMS), from InfoSpan Corporation, Edina, Minn. IRMS "is the only product I know of that promises to conform to IRDS," said Goldfine. Wether or not it win is unknown, but it is heading in the right direction."

Harjinder Gill, president of Info Span, said he believes that the federal marketplace is not looking for a single, unique offering that satisfies every requirement, but rather a set of products that can interact intelligently. The main requirements of the federal market are, according to Gill, that the product must be portable, requiring no new training; it must exchange information between agencies and departments; and it must use common representational methods and models."

One of InfoSpan's founders, Dr. Saeed Rahimi, said,"The most useful part of IRMS is its high-level objectoriented view, which enables one to look at any kind of methodology within Case and store information concerning it."

IRMS can support the Case tools of different vendors, as well as data dictionaries and reengineering tools. IRMS has an open architecture that conforms to IBM's SAA and Common User Access guidelines. Info Span plans to allow migration from the project-level repository to the IBM AD/Cycle Repository on the mainframe. IRMS is currently available on PC, PS/2 and Unix, and runs as a LAN server, providing repository services at the workgroup level.

According to Rahimi, "What is missing from the IBM Repository is the ability to have a repository available to the individual to play with, much like a test database, so that an individual user cannot cause an error that brings the entire system down. IRMS provides this.

"IRMS is not dependent on a given methodology, but can be used to model anything; for example, a data-flow diagram, an entity-relationship model or an element in a program," said Rahimi.

The implementation of IRMS is accomplished with the IRMS Repository Primer, which helps users understand the environment they are modeling and how they can develop an object-oriented view of that environment. The Primer is essentially a textbook that discusses what the repository is, what it may be used for, as well as a description of how to set it up.

InfoSpan also provides readymade repositories that can be used "as is" or adapted to a firm's specific needs.