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Description
The combination of design and documentation systems offers a new way of creating integrated environments for designers in general, and introduces a new paradigm for VLSI design. We show that it is possible to develop effective design methodologies that enable creating design and documentation in a single thread without intruding in the design process.
Active documentation is also used as a new paradigm for creating a common interface to heterogeneous tools and data used in system design environments. We add a new integration layer that hides heterogeneity by enabling designers to control the flow of information between independent systems through a document manipulation paradigm. We also show how information-based services available through electronic commerce could be integrated into the design environment using this paradigm. Active documents become a vehicle for transporting design data and operations between frameworks in independent organizations, enabling the creation of virtual enterprises for development of electronic systems.
We develop a realistic model for creating a system supporting the integration of design and documentation based on a new infrastructure that attempts to re-use existing framework services and design and documentation tools with minimal modification. From the data point of view, it introduces a new layer within the design database. This new layer contains descriptions of how the design data is organized and presented. It is a data structure with references to the design data, configuration and history data. It also includes mechanisms to tool invocations to present the data. The new presentation layer is organized as a set of active documents. Designers manipulate them just like the documents produced by documentation processing systems.