Supporting organization and use of problem-solving methods libraries by a formal approach

✍ Scribed by CHRISTINE PIERRET-GOLBREICH

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 410 KB
• Volume: 49
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1071-5819
• DOI: 10.1006/ijhc.1998.0215

✦ Synopsis

Different libraries of problem-solving methods have been described in the past few years. But they have mostly been defined at an informal or operational level and rarely at the formal level. Since their components lack a clear definition and rigorous structuration, it is difficult to ensure that a method selected from a library is correctly reused in the development of an application. This is the reason why we have chosen a formal approach to support problem-solving methods libraries organisation and use. Our approach is based on algebraic specifications. Our first contribution presents how such formal techniques can provide reusable PSMs with a precise and unambiguous semantics and with a mathematically well-defined hierarchical structuration. Second, we show how reusing and adapting such PSMs to develop particular applications can be rigorously formalized. A library fragment of assignment methods is used to illustrate how to structure a PSM library. Sisyphus I example is used to describe how to derive a formal specification of an application by reusing components of this library. The paper focuses on the competence of PSMs regardless of their dynamic aspects.

1998 Academic Press.