Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/193421

Title

A generic approach to supporting diagram differencing and merging for collaborative design

Author(s)

Mehra, Akhil;  Grundy, John;  Hosking, John

Abstract

Differentiation tools enable team members to compare two or more text files, e.g. code or documentation, after change. Although a number of general-purpose differentiation tools exist for comparing text documents very few tools exist for comparing diagrams. We describe a new approach for realising visual differentiation in CASE tools via a set of plug-in components. We have added diagram version control, visual differentiation and merging support as component-based plug-ins to the Pounamu meta-CASE tool. The approach is generic across a wide variety of diagram types and has also been deployed with an Eclipse diagramming plug-in. We describe our approach's architecture, key design and implementation issues, illustrate feasibility of our approach via implementation of it as plug-in components and evaluate its effectiveness.

Publication type

Conference paper

Source

Proceedings of the 20th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2005), Long Beach, California, United States, 07-11 November 2005, pp. 204-213

Publication year

2005

FOR Code(s)

0803 Computer Software

Keyword(s)

CASE tools;  Collaborative design;  Component based;  Computer aided software engineering;  Computer software;  Differentiation tool;  Generic approach;  Merging;  Meta-CASE;  New approaches;  Plug-ins;  Team members;  Text document;  Text file;  Version control;  Visual differencing

Publisher

ACM

ISBN

9781581139938, 1581139934

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1101908.1101940

Copyright

Copyright © 2005 ACM.

Peer reviewed