MetaCASE tool

A metaCASE tool is a type of application software that provides the possibility to create one or more modeling methods, languages or notations for use within the process of software development. Often the result is a modeling tool for that language. MetaCASE tools are thus a kind of language workbench, generally considered as being focused on graphical modeling languages.

Another definition: MetaCASE tools are software tools that support the design and generation of CASE tools. In general, metaCASE tools should provide generic CASE tool components that can be customised and instantiated into particular CASE tools. The intent of metaCASE tools is to capture the specification of the required CASE tool and then generate the tool from the specification.

Building large-scale software applications is very complicated process which is not easy to handle. Software companies must have good system of cooperation throughout developing teams and good displicine is highly required.

Nevertheless, using CASE tools is modern way how to speed up software development and ensure higher level of application design. However, there are another issues which has to be kept in mind. First of all usage of these tools doesn't guarantee good results because they are usually large, complex and extremely costly to produce and adopt.

CASE tools can be classified as either front-end or back-end tools depending on the phase of software development they are intended to support: for example, “Front-end’ analysis and design tools versus “Back-end” implementation tools. For a software engineers working on a particular application project, the choice of CASE tool would typically be determined by factors such as size of project, methodology used, availability of tools, project budget, and numbers of people involved. For some applications, a suitable tool may not be available or the project may be too small to benefit from one.

CASE tools support a fixed number of methodologies but software development organizations dynamically change their adopted methodologies.

MetaCASE products are usually highly specialised, application development environments which produce a custom tool(set) from a high level description of the required tools.

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