3,458 papers · page 171 of 173
The authors have used KIDS (Kestrel Interactive Development System) to derive extremely fast and accurate transportation schedulers from formal specifications. As test data, strategic transportation plans which are generated by US government planners are used. In one such problem…
This paper presents research into the automation of design phase software synthesis. Key features of an application domain, real-time multi-tasking software, are incorporated into a design selection heuristic. This heuristic captures the mathematical underpinnings inherent in the…
The paper describes a general purpose scheduler into which one can add knowledge necessary to solve specific scheduler problems. The approach typifies how software should be developed for specific classes of applications. Using a general scheduler is analogous to the use of an ex…
Software testing criteria produce test descriptions that may be viewed as systems of constraints describing desired test cases. Refinement of test descriptions is possible by adding additional constraints to each test description, reducing the solution space and focusing attentio…
The educational requirements for the field of knowledge-based software engineering (KBSE) are defined. By analyzing an updated version of the program transformation system paradigm, ten topic areas reflecting KBSE educational requirements are identified. It is shown that many of …
Abstraction fosters reuse by providing a class of artifacts that can be instantiated or customized to produce a set of artifacts meeting different specific requirements. The authors propose that significant leverage can be obtained by abstracting software system designs and the d…
The objectives of the author are: to identify and discuss the major implications of the US Department of Defense's (DoD's) software technology planning for research and development in the area of knowledge-based software engineering (KBSE); and to offer the KBSE research communit…
The authors describe a very general class of composite data structures, and a language in which programmers can describe which to use for each purpose. These data structures are composed of primitive data structures drawn from a relatively small library that can be extended by th…
A technique is proposed for semiformal specification. The authors distinguish two stages of formalization: data modeling and specification of operations. For each stage, the system provides a distinct tool. It consists of a graphical component called the MER diagram and a textual…
The author explores part of the boundary of formal design, seeking to apply formal techniques to aid in the derivation of a distributed design. This is demonstrated on the rederivation of the train signaling protocol developed in the 19th century. It was this protocol that gave r…
It is argued that domain-oriented design environments (DODEs) provide a complementary goal for the future of software engineering to the approaches pursued with knowledge-based software assistant systems (KBSAs). The DODE extends the KBSA framework by emphasizing a human-centered…
The authors show how the compositional software reuse approach can be fruitfully cast in the case-based reasoning (CBR) paradigm. Any CBR system in which the cases are software artifacts must rely on software-specific concepts to provide adequate knowledge representation. However…
The authors have built a prototype software synthesis system, the Lockheed Environment for Automatic Programming (LEAP). The LEAP synthesis approach depends on using software assets that are built during the course of application development. In the largest application built so f…
The efficient configuration and reconfiguration of software systems has been a major problem in software engineering. Configuration management is presented from a logic perspective. It is shown that much functionality can be generated automatically when configurations are conside…
The author considers how knowledge-based tools can support scientific computing, with a focus on the support of code generation. Scientific computing traditionally is carried out by mathematical modelers who write their own Fortran programs. As faster machines and new architectur…
The authors describe a knowledge-based software development environment for scientific modeling. The SIGMA system provides scientist-users with a high-level data flow language for specifying scientific models. This language is intended to be both easier to use and easier to under…
Program understanding can be greatly assisted by automating the recognition of abstract concepts present in the program code. The authors describe an approach to automated concept recognition and its implementation. In the approach, a concept model and a library of concept recogn…
The authors show how VDM specifications can be prototyped as REFINE programs. The translation process takes advantage of the facilities of the KIDS environment (D.R. Smith, 1990). A new VDM mode has been added to the environment to support transformations of the specifications. T…
The problem of generating instrumentation that efficiently computes derived performance data of program execution is examined. The instrumentation computes these derived data at run time as the directly accessible data are collected. It tests conditions defined on the collected d…
The authors report an intelligent advisor which helps software engineer to reuse domain abstractions to improve the consistency, completeness, and clarity of requirement specifications. Understanding unfamiliar domain abstractions can be difficult, so partial exposure and visuali…