Information engineering and the Information Engineering Facility verus rapid application development and FOCUS

Abstract

The Management Information Systems Department of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is considering using the information engineering methodology with Texas Instrument's Information Engineering Facility (IEF), an integrated computer-aided software engineering toolset, for application development. The costs and benefits of introducing information engineering and IEP versus the rapid application development methodology and fourth generation programming language, FOCUS, were analyzed through a case study developed in both IEP and FOCUS. IEF offers a one model implementation, a standard computerized methodology, consistency checking, management tools for the application developer, and superior diagramming features and screen design whereas FOCUS offers rapid prototyping, numeric functions, a report facility, security within the data model, inherent databse management facilities and excellent documentation. The benefits of IEF did not outweigh its costs. RAD and DOCUS were determined to be the methodology and tool of choice respectively for application development for the MIS department.