Software Tools for Program Development

Step in the program developments are :-

1) Program design, coding and documentation.

2) Preparation of program in machine readable form.

3) Program translation linking and loading.

4) Program testing debugging.

5) performance tuning.

6) Reformatting the data or results of program to suit other programs.

1.Program Design and Coding

Tools used for program design and coding are :-

a) Program generators.

b) Programming environments.

•   A program generator generates a program which performs a set of
functions described in its specification.

• A   programming   environment   supports   program   cooing  by
incorporating awareness of the programming language syntax and semantics in the language editor.

2. Program Entry and Editing :-

•  In this, text editors are used as front ends tool. The editor operates m
two mode:

Command mode and data mode:-

• In the command mode, it accepts user commands specifying the editing function to be performed. In the data mode, the user keys in the text to added to the file.

3. Program Testing and Debugging :-

•  The important parameters are the selection of test data for the
program analysis of test result to detect errors and debugging.

•  For program testing, the selection of test data for program and
analysis o test results to detect error if any is important.

• User uses the software tools for this purpose.

1) Test data generators.
2) Automated test drivers.
3) Debug monitors.
4)  Source code control.

•  Test data generators help the programmer in selecting test data.

• Regression testing is done through automated test drives. in this,
program correctness is verified by subjecting it to a standard set of
tests after every modification.

• Obtaining the  information about localization of error, debug monitor is used.

• Source code control system help to keep track of modification
in the source code.

4. Enhancement of Program Performance :-

• Two factors affects the program efficiency.

These are:

a)Efficiency of the algorithm

b)Efficiency of its coding

• An optimizing compiler can improve efficiency of the code but it cannot improve efficiency of the algorithm. Only a program designer can improve efficiency of an algorithm by rewriting it.

5. Program Documentation :-

Most programming projects suffer from lack of up to date documentation ~ Automatic documentation tools are motivated by the desire to overcome this deficiency.

• These tools work on the source program to produce different
forms of documentation e.g. flow charts.

6. Design for Software Tools :-

Program preprocessing techniques are used to support static analysis   of  programs.   Program   instrumentation   implies insertion  of  statements  in  a  program.  The  instrumented program is translated using a standard translator.Figure below shows the schematic of software tools using the
techniques of interpretation and program generation.Interpreter based tools suffer from poor efficiency and poor portability, since an interpreter base tool is only as portable as the interpreter it uses. A generate program is more efficient and can be made portable.

Fig - Software Tool