Software technology for scientific and engineering applications

Software engineering is one of the most important aspects of the computer science field. Significant advances in this area have been made in recent years, especially with regard to systems software development. Relatively little work has been done, however, to apply this technology to scientific and engineering software. Much of the difficulty in transferring software engineering techniques to this important area is due to significant differences in its underlying objectives. This paper briefly explores these differences, and develops a framework within which software and data base engineering concepts can be applied. Using this framework, a number of tools and techniques currently in use by The Analytic Sciences Corporation (TASC) are described. These methods have led to substantial increases in scientific software quality at lower cost.