Simulation is frequently used for training in many application areas like aviation and economics, but not in software engineering. We present the SESAM project which focuses on software engineering education using simulation. In the SESAM project a simulator was developed. Using this simulator, a student can take the role of a software project manager. The simulated software project can be finished within a couple of hours because it is simulated in “quick-motion” mode.

Teaching software engineering as well as researching in this area is very tedious due to the length and costliness of software projects. SESAM ('Software Engineering Simulation by Animated Models') therefore is designed as a simulator for software projects, allowing students to gain reality-like experiences in project management and researchers to evaluate hypotheses on the mechanisms influencing software projects. This paper focuses on the basic assumptions for SESAM, its building blocks and the way hypotheses are affecting the simulation. After a short description of the requirements for SESAM, the authors introduce objects, attributes, actions, relationships between objects, and hypotheses as its basic concepts. They present attributed graph grammars as a means for representing hypotheses. Finally they position their project with respect to related work, and they show its present a state and future development.>

SEED is a database system which supports the data engineering needs of a software engineering environment. It provides information structures that are not incorporated in conventional database systems, but are typical in the software engineering process. This paper describes two principal features of SEED: how to deal with vague and incomplete information without giving up consistency checking, and the management of database versions and variants. A prototype of SEED is used as the database for an existing specification and design tool.

This paper outlines a specification system for process control software, named ESPRESO, which was developed at the Nuclear Research Center, Karlsruhe, West Germany. ESPRESO is based on some new ideas, which are combined with elements taken from other systems. ESPRESO consists of a set of concepts, a specification language, a tool for the management, evaluation and validation of specifications, and the method how to use the system. Language, tool, and method are carefully adapted to the concepts. The primary aim was to demonstrate some features of a specification system which are currently not available, rather than to provide a new tool for the software market.