8.2 Application Integration and Development



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8.2 Application Integration and Development

The close correspondence between the types of tool integration in software engineering frameworks (see, e.g., [56] [58], [57], where typical applications are compilers, linkers, editors, ...) and the types of tool integration in VISTA (where typical applications are device and process simulators) is striking, but not entirely unexpected. This is very likely a direct consequence of the similar architecture and the historical background. In both cases, applications (compilers, linkers, simulation tools) did already exist before the advent of integrated systems. The integration of existing applications is one of the main motivations for an application-framework architecture.

It has been shown in Section 8.3 that the task and data level of VISTA allows for the integration of batch-mode applications with just minor effort. As expected, the application-framework architecture is also supporting the decomposition of existing larger programs into smaller modules. The sizes of new applications that were developed using VISTA as development environment are significantly reduced, especially when high level toolkit services are utilized [141]. Typical sizes of new applications are in the range of 200kBgif to 300kBgif (approximately a fourth of the average source code size of traditional TCAD applications) thanks to the re-use of technology-independent services that are provided by the framework. These smaller applications are of course more comprehensible and better maintainable than traditional, large multi-functional tools. A synergetic effect for the creation of new simulation capabilities is exploited by the combination of generic framework services with specific simulation modules to synthesize new applications.  

The example application clearly demonstrates that, by utilizing the VORONOI framework service, no additional efforts (except for the sole integration) are required to ensure the inter-operability of three entirely different tools. Such features can not be found among all other existing TCAD systems, independent of their capabilities and level of maturity.



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Martin Stiftinger
Thu Oct 13 13:51:43 MET 1994