ALBERT

Description: The CRISP90 Software Design Analyzer System, an update of CRISP-80, is a set of programs forming a software design and documentation tool which supports top-down, hierarchic, modular, structured design and programming methodologies. The quality of a computer program can often be significantly influenced by the design medium in which the program is developed. The medium must foster the expression of the programmer's ideas easily and quickly, and it must permit flexible and facile alterations, additions, and deletions to these ideas as the design evolves. The CRISP90 software design analyzer system was developed to provide the PDL (Programmer Design Language) programmer with such a design medium. A program design using CRISP90 consists of short, English-like textual descriptions of data, interfaces, and procedures that are imbedded in a simple, structured, modular syntax. The display is formatted into two-dimensional, flowchart-like segments for a graphic presentation of the design. Together with a good interactive full-screen editor or word processor, the CRISP90 design analyzer becomes a powerful tool for the programmer. In addition to being a text formatter, the CRISP90 system prepares material that would be tedious and error prone to extract manually, such as a table of contents, module directory, structure (tier) chart, cross-references, and a statistics report on the characteristics of the design. Referenced modules are marked by schematic logic symbols to show conditional, iterative, and/or concurrent invocation in the program. A keyword usage profile can be generated automatically and glossary definitions inserted into the output documentation. Another feature is the capability to detect changes that were made between versions. Thus, "change-bars" can be placed in the output document along with a list of changed pages and a version history report. Also, items may be marked as "to be determined" and each will appear on a special table until the item is supplied. The CRISP90 software design analyzer system is written in Microsoft QuickBasic. The program requires an IBM PC compatible with a hard disk, 128K RAM, and an ASCII printer. The program operates under MS-DOS/PC-DOS 3.10 or later. The program was developed in 1983 and updated in 1990. Microsoft and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. IBM PC and PC-DOS are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. CRISP90 is a copyrighted work with all copyright vested in NASA.