A comparative case study of three database application development environments

Abstract

This paper describes an exploratory case study that investigates the claim that the object-oriented approach to information systems development reduces development effort and improves maintainability. Software metrics for development effort, complexity, and maintainability of three functionally similar 4GL database development environments, one objected-oriented and two traditional (relational) are compared. The results indicate that programs developed using the object-oriented environment needed fewer lines of code, had less volume, required less effort, were less complex and were more maintainable than those developed using the traditional 4GL environments.