Software Engineering Institute

Commercial computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tool technology has emerged as an important component of practical software development environments. Issues of CASE tool integration have received heightened attention in recent years, with various commercial products and technical approaches promising to make inroads into this difficult problem. One aspect of CASE integration that has not been adequately addressed is the integration of CASE tools with configuration management (CM), including both CM policies and systems. Organizations need to address how to make CASE tools from different vendors work effectively with an organization's CM policies and tools (in effect, integrate CASE with CM) within the context of the rapidly evolving state of commercial integration technology. This report describes key issues of the integration of CASE with CM from a third-party integrator's perspective, i.e., how to approach the integration of CASE and CM in such a way as to not require fundamental changes to the implementation of the tools or CM systems themselves.