MasterCraft — Special Events

30th June 2003 saw the release of the first version of the much awaited methodology document, MasterCraft Agile Process (MAP). It outlines a requirement-centric process for Rapid Application Development (RAD). MAP separates the problem domain and solution domain clearly and highlights the model-driven software development support in MasterCraft. The requirement-driven viewpoint model addresses both functional and non-functional requirements in four distinct contexts for capturing, analyzing, modeling, and prototyping requirements. It is for the first time that the types of requirements have been explored as the basic distinguishing criteria for defining viewpoints. Identifying the distinct viewpoints helps in separation of the respective concerns and promotes a parallel thought process along those viewpoints. MAP provides a clear identification of actors, activities, artefacts and verification, and validation in every viewpoint.

A research paper based on the MAP approach has been published at the workshop on Engineering methods to Support Information Systems Evolution (EMSISE'03), Geneva. A patent based on MAP has also been filed. The SRS template suggested as per MAP has now been treated as an organization-level document and has been made available on TCS’ Intranet.

2003 also saw the releases of the newer versions of MasterCraft Enterprise, namely, Java, .Net, and C++; the key features of the releases are support for the Linux platform, compliance to J2EE 1.3 standards (CMP 2.0), and support for message-driven beans.