This paper presents the architecture and basic features of the Ithaca Application Development Environment based on a Software lnformation System for enhancing reusability of both software components and artefacts about development of these components. Object-oriented techniques are used in the Environment at all levels of the development of an application: requirement specification, scripting, implementation through class refinement and tailoring. In the Environment, it is tracked how the various products of the development phases were produced by providing tools for the Application Engineer who is responsible for abstracting application skeletons and development information and storing these as Application Frames into a Software Information Base. In particular, the paper describes the Requirement Collection And Specification Tool (RECAST) and the Visual Scripting Tool (Vista) of the Ithaca Development Environment