A general framework for positioning, evaluating and selecting the new generation of development tools

This paper focuses on the evaluation and positioning of a new generation of development tools containing subtools (browsers, debuggers, GUI-builders, ...) and programming languages that are designed to work together and have a common graphical user interface and are therefore called environments. Several trends in IT have led to a pluriform range of development tools that can be classified in numerous categories. Examples are: object-oriented tools, GUI-tools, upper and lower CASE-tools, client/server tools and 4GL environments. This classification does not sufficiently cover the tools subject in this paper for the reason that only one criterion is used to distinguish them. The new generation of development environments often fit in several categories because to a certain extent, several criteria can be applied to evaluate them. In this study, we will offer a broad classification scheme with which tools can be positioned and which can be refined through further research.