This paper presents recent developments in a distributed semantic hypertext framework called DHT that supports software development projects within virtual enterprises. We show how hypertext functionality embodied in DHT solves the practical problems of project coordination. These include collaborative data sharing in a virtual enterprise of distributed teams, integrating existing tools and environments, and enacting software processes to coordinate development activities for teams across wide-area networks.In particular, we describe how software process enactment can be achieved within a virtual enterprise without centralized mechanisms. This is when the process description is represented as a usernavigable hypertext graph the nodes of which associate process steps, staff roles and associated tools with designated software products. Overall, these capabilities provide support for coordinating software development projects across a virtual enterprise of teams connected via the Internet.

In this paper, we describe our efforts to support the modeling and simulation of processes associated with software system acquisition activities. Software acquisition is generally a multi-organization endeavor concerned with the funding, management, engineering, system integration, deployment and long-term support of large software systems. We first describe a language for modeling software acquisition processes at the architectural level. We then describe our approach supporting the simulation of software acquisition processes within a process architecture. Along the way, we introduce how we employ the High-Level Architecture (HLA) and Run-Time Infrastructure (RTI) to support the distribution, concurrent execution and interoperation of multiple software process simulations to address the complexity of software acquisition process architectures. In addition, we also introduce the design and prototyping of a Web-based environment which supports the modeling and simulation of acquisitio...

INTRODUCTION What is the power of hypertext in supporting software engineering? (The term "hypertext" is treated throughout as synonymous with "hypermedia" which denotes the nonlinear representation of interrelated textual, graphic, filmic, or auditory information.) Power in other contexts usually refers to the ability of some entity or agent to affect the behavior of another or to achieve advantage over another in ways that the other cannot avoid. Following this, one might expect that as a technology, hypertext systems offer relative advantage over alternatives to automated text/document information systems, including conventional word processing systems, file systems, and database management systems. Hypertext systems offer a degree of information processing power that enables new kinds of applications, much like the advent of expert system shells enabled the creation of expert applications for domains such as computer configuration and diagnostic pathology.

Emerging technologies such as the Internet, the World Wide Web, Java TM technology, and software components, are changing the software business. Activities that have in the past been constrained by the need for intense information management increasingly involve cooperating organizations. Information management tools and techniques do not scale well in the face of this organizational complexity. An informal approach to information sharing, based largely on manual copying of information, cannot meet the demands of the task as size and complexity increase. Formal approaches to sharing information are based on groupware tools, but cooperating organizations do not always enjoy the trust or commonality of sophisticated infrastructure, methods, and skills that this approach requires. Bridging the gap requires a simple, loosely coupled, highly flexible strategy for information sharing. Extensive information relevant to different parts of the software life cycle should be interconnected in a...

ket for EC. However, the requisite software application componentry and infrastructure to facilitate this is unclear. For a variety of reasons, it seems that many heterogeneous technological solutions will be put forward as contenders. As a result, businesses will seek to exercise autonomous choices that best serve their strategic interests when selecting software technologies to support their EC. I am interested in understanding how complex business processes can be supported and executed using a widearea information infrastructure. Together with my colleagues, I have studied processes associated with military procurement, research grants management, corporate financial operations, system acquisition, and large-scale software engineering among others. All of these are appropriate domains for the application of concepts, techniques and tools for EC. I have led research projects that developed technologies for specifying, using and evolving computational representations of business proc

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Abstract. Emerging technologies such as the Internet, the World Wide Web, Java TM technology, and software components are accelerating product life cycles and encouraging collaboration across organizational boundaries. The familiar coordination problems of large scale software development reappear in a context where tools used by collaborators must be less tightly coupled to one another than before. To the traditional notion of scale, based on the size of software systems, must be added a new dimension of scale: organizational complexity. Designing configuration management systems that scale well over both dimensions requires difficult trade-offs between reliability and flexibility. At the heart of these trade-offs is the aggregate information shared by collaborators: how it is represented, maintained, and understood by the people and tools using it. While designing a prototype development environment intended to scale in both dimensions, we have revisited the role played by naming. A proposed extension to the prototype’s naming system addresses issues such as which objects should be named and how the shared naming system is constructed. 1