- Leap SE, a CASE tool developed by Leap Systems in
Melbourne, FL, is doing what many thought impossible: turning natural English
into object models for software development. Could the dream of one day being
able to program computers by speaking to them finally be in sight? Maybe, but
Leap Systems doesn’t make such a grandiose claim—at least not yet.
- While the product is
fundamentally a requirements repository—a database for maintaining the
domain-specific requirements dictated by systems engineers, end users, and
domain experts, it’s more than just a document management system; it’s a rapid
application development (RAD) tool that automates the systems analysis process.
The object models produced are logical models of the subject system,
however, not physical models. Implementation is left to an organization’s
software development team, which may use its own RAD tools to carry forward the
header files generated by Leap SE. Reverse-engineering tools, in particular, are
well suited to inherit the output of Leap SE; but instead of extrapolating
design diagrams from code, the tide flows in the other direction—from
requirements to design diagrams.
- The effectiveness of Leap SE lies in the
enormous cost savings that suddenly become possible when analysis is automated.
This is where medium-to-large scale software development projects stand to gain
the most. As the name implies, Leap SE enables engineers to “leap over” a
substantial part of the systems analysis effort. Event lists, entity definition,
and functional decomposition no longer need to be arduous, time-consuming tasks
that push out program schedules and add systems engineers to staff. By capturing
the structure, inter-relationships, and behavior of the system directly from the
requirements themselves, Leap SE achieves RAD from the source and enforces the
creation of both build-able and testable requirements.
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- Behind an
easy-to-use graphical user interface, the application applies a complex
set of algorithms to every saved requirement. Not only are classes,
attributes and methods produced, but UML relationships as
well: associations in the form of pointer data members and composition in the
form of object references. To generate an object model, a single click produces
an entire directory of C++ header files that form a logical model of the subject system.Built on a sophisticated new
methodology called Deterministic Phraseology (DP), which can best be described
as a marriage between a grammatical interpreter and a UML code generator, Leap
SE is fast making its way into the Telecommunications industry and government
business units.
- So how does it work? One of the primary goals
of Leap SE is to make requirement composition as straightforward and natural as
possible, and to keep the inner-workings of DP hidden from the user. To that
end, 21 templates are supplied (18 functional and 3 structural) that offer
virtually all the combinations of phrases an author of system requirements would
ever need. By drafting sentences in a scratch-pad work area, or copying them in
from another source, engineers are able to use the text as a guideline to
“type-and-tab” their requirements into the appropriate template fields. In
addition to the 21 templates, a technical composer is provided for repository
completeness, as well as a powerful Builder that takes advantage of the full
capabilities of DP. The Builder gives users a truly versatile tool for crafting
requirements and developing ad hoc templates. And once a requirement is saved
with the Builder, it can be readily reused as a custom template for future
requirements that follow the same footprint.
- For product information, visit Leap Systems’
website at
http://www.leapse.com or contact Brian Smith at
sales@leapse.com. The website includes a free demonstration download of Leap
SE, as well as a 30-day free trial version provided by request.
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