User-Defined Critics for Software Adaptation

This proposal investigates using a knowledge acquisition system called The Discovery MachineT to enable SMEs to construct critics to evolve software. The Discovery Machine enables SMEs to construct critics by providing: Easy to use KA tools for capturing and experimenting with processes and objects, Very high-level formal languages for encoding, validating and verifying processes and objects in a semantic ontology, Help systems and intelligent meta-agents for guiding users through algorithmically difficult processes.The combination of these ideas can enable automated construction of software critics, and, ultimately, fully-functioning software code generated directly from SME specified requirements. Current tools such as CASE and UML diagramming tools are focused onassisting software professionals in communicating design ideas to programmers. Some tools such as Rational Rose provide limited code generation and validation capabilities. They still require professional software developers who understand UML and thedetailed syntax of generated object-oriented languages. In addition these visual languages are not