A hypercode software engineering environment represents all plausible multimedia artifacts concerned with software development and evolution that can be placed or generated on-line, from source code to formal documentation to digital library resources to informal email and chat transcripts.A hypercode environment supports both internal (hypertext) and external (link server) links among these artifacts, which can be added incrementally as useful connections are discovered; project-specific hypermedia search and browsing; automated construction of artifacts and hyperlinks according the software process; application of tools to the artifacts according to the process workflow; and collaborative work for geographically dispersed teams. We present a general architecture for what we call hypermedia subwebs, and groupspace services operating on shared subwebs, based on World Wide Web technology -which could be applied over the Internet or within an intranet.We describe our realization in OzWeb.

Abstract. We introduce CHIME, the Columbia Hypermedia IMmersion Environment, a metadata-based information environment, and describe its potential applications for internet and intranet-based distributed software development. CHIME derives many of its concepts from Multi-User Domains (MUDs), placing users in a semi-automatically generated 3D virtual world representing the software system. Users interact with project artifacts by "walking around" the virtual world, where they potentially encounter and collaborate with other users' avatars. CHIME aims to support large software development projects, in which team members are often geographically and temporally dispersed, through novel use of virtual environment technology. We describe the mechanisms through which CHIME worlds are populated with project artifacts, as well as our initial experiments with CHIME and our future goals for the system.

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Abstract. We introduce CHIME, the Columbia Hypermedia IMmersion Environment, a metadata-based information environment, and describe its potential applications for internet and intranet-based distributed software development. CHIME derives many of its concepts from Multi-User Domains (MUDs), placing users in a semi-automatically generated 3D virtual world representing the software system. Users interact with project artifacts by "walking around" the virtual world, where they potentially encounter and collaborate with other users' avatars. CHIME aims to support large software development projects, in which team members are often geographically and temporally dispersed, through novel use of virtual environment technology. We describe the mechanisms through which CHIME worlds are populated with project artifacts, as well as our initial experiments with CHIME and our future goals for the system.

We have developed a middleware framework for workgroup environments that can support distributed software development and a variety of other application domains requiring document management and change management for distributed projects. The framework enables hypermedia-based integration of arbitrary legacy and new information resources available via a range of protocols, not necessarily known in advance to us as the general framework developers nor even to the environment instance designers. The repositories in which such information resides may be dispersed across the Internet and/or an organizational intranet. The framework also permits a range of client models for user and tool interaction, and applies an extensible suite of collaboration services, including but not limited to multi-participant workflow and coordination, to their information retrievals and updates. That is, the framework is interposed between clients, services and repositories -thus "middleware". We explain how our framework makes it easy to realize a comprehensive collection of workgroup and workflow features we culled from a requirements survey conducted by NASA. KEYWORDS:Distributed software development support, distributed document management, monitoring and managing distributed development processes, distributed change management, workflow management and coordination support in distributed projects, Internet-based software process coordination Backend Heterogeneous Information Repositories Frontend Heterogeneous User/Tool Clients