The ProcessWall: a process state server approach to process programming
SDE 5 Proceedings of the fifth ACM SIGSOFT symposium on Software development environments
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WE DESCRIBE AN APPROACH TO "INTELLIGENT ASSISTANCE" FOR THE "PROCESS" OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT, USING AN ARCHITECTURE BASED ON "PLANNING" AND "PLAN RECOGNITION". PROCESSES ARE FORMALLY DEFINED HIERARCHICALLY VIA PLAN OPER- ATORS. PLANS ARE CONSTRUCTED DYNAMICALLY FROM THE OPERATORS; THE SEQUENCES OF ACTIONS IN PLANS ARE TAILORED TO THE CONTEXT OF THEIR USE, AND CONFLICTS AMONG ACTIONS ARE PREVENTED. MONITORING OF THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS, TO DE- TECT AND AVERT PROCESS ERRORS, IS ACCOMPLISHED BY PLAN RECOGNITION; THIS ESTABLISHES A CONTEXT IN WHICH PROGRAMMER-SELECTED GOALS CAN BE AUTOMATED VIA PLAN GENERATION. ACHIEVING SUBSTANTIVE ASSISTANCE REQUIRES EXTENSIVE DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE. WE SHOW TWO WAYS TO EXTEND THE REPRESENTATIONAL POWER OF PLANNING SYSTEMS TO CAPTURE ADDITIONAL DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE. INTELLIGENT ASSISTANCE INVOLVES, BY ITS VERY NATURE, "HIDDEN STATE"--- INFORMATION ABOUT THE STATE OF THE WORLD IS INCOMPLETE. THIS MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO EVALUATE SOME PRECONDITIONS, SUBGOALS OR CONSTRAINTS IN OPER- ATOR DEFINITIONS. THE SOLUTION TO ACQUIRING THE MISSING INFORMATION IS TO MAKE PLAUSIBLE ASSUMPTIONS USING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT WHAT IS TYPICAL OR EXPECT- ED IN THE CURRENT CONTEXT. THIS EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE ALLOWS ADDITIONAL DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE TO BE EXPLOITED, YIELDING A DEEPER CONTEXT FOR REASONING ABOUT ACTIONS. PLAN RECOGNITION CAN BE EXTENDED TO HANDLE HIDDEN STATE BY REPRESENTING