CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) A CASE tool is a product that assists in all phases of the System Development

Life Cycle (SDLC). Connect Partnership use of CASE Tools The Connect Partnership utilises the Oracle Designer suite to design, develop and maintain a range of bespoke applications. Advantages of CASE Utilising CASE tools in the System Development Life Cycle (SLDC) provides a number of advantages. Methodology CASE tools provide modelling and development tools which allow the users to follow certain design methodologies. For example, the Oracle Designer suite allows users to follow the System Development Life Cycle (SLDC) Methodology along with the Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology (SSADM) more iterative methodologies such as prototyping. It does this by providing modelling tools for the creation of Process Models, Functional Hierarchy Diagrams, Data-Flow Diagrams and Entity-Relationship Diagrams. Following this, Oracle Designer can transform a logical entity model into a physical model which can be generated into a database application. Oracle Designer contains tools for coding stored procedures, and also has the functionality to generate a Graphical User Interface (GUI) utilising Oracle Forms and Reports. Centralised Repository Oracle Designer provides a centralised repository in which all work is stored that may be accessed by a number of people. This allows designers/developers to work simultaneously on the same application with all of the work being immediately available to others. Another advantage of this is that all of the design details and development code is in one place which reduces the possibility of source code being missed when collating for a software release and also makes tasks such as backups easier. Documentation The repository that holds all of the information for the CASE tool provides a vast amount of system documentation. This ranges from the system design which may be represented by a number of models (Entity-Relationship, Process Model, Data Flow, etc) through to comments that are stored in the application on varying objects such as tables, views, and PL/SQL modules. As this documentation is stored and linked to the application in the repository, it is also easier to ensure that it is kept up to date. For example, if an application is being amended that requires new tables to be added, this can be done in a modelling tool and then transformed through to the application development tools, and finally generated into the application. Oracle Designer also allows a number of useful reports to be generated from the repository.

Development Standards As development work is being conducted in the same repository utilising a standard tool set, it is easier to enforce development standards. The Design Editor in the Oracle Designer suite provides the functionality to develop all database stored procedural code. In doing so, it provides a structure for breaking this code into modules containing packages, procedures, functions, cursors and triggers. It also provides more standardisation of table and view creation as well as activities such as allocating tablespaces to tables and indexes, creating synonyms and granting access to users/roles. Code Re-usability PL/SQL is stored in a modularised form and grouped whether it is a function, procedure, cursor or trigger. These individual modules are then included in other PL/SQL modules (e.g. packages) as sub-program units. When these modules are generated out of the repository, all underlying sub-programs are included to make up that modules source code. The modularised PL/SQL unit may be included as a sub-program unit in multiple PL/SQL modules. Time Saving/Efficiency A significant amount of time and effort can be saved by using Case tools during the SLDC. Case tools allow you to take a systems design, which is integrated through modelling and other design tools, and to transform it into a physical application (tables, foreign keys, etc) in a development tool. This saves time and effort required and also reduces the risk of error. As PL/SQL source code is stored in a modularised form in the repository, if a piece of code (e.g. function or cursor) is being used in more than one package, the code only has to be modified in one place. All packages that include the modified unit may then simply be re-generated and applied to the database. Maintenance Having all of the design/development information stored in a centralised repository utilised by a CASE tool allows for more efficient maintenance of systems. All of the design models are readily available for update, all changes made to the design can be transformed through to the application in the development tool which reduces the chances of error, table changes can be generated against the database so that only the changes are included in the generated script, and all source code is easily located and modularised so it is easy to change a module and re-generate the changes back into the application.