Knowware-Based Software Engineering

Abstract

The first part of this chapter reviews the origin of knowware-based software engineering. It originates from the authors' experiences in finding new techniques for knowledge-based software engineering while performing PROMIS, a continuing project series from the 1990s. The key point of PROMIS is to generate applications automatically by separating the development of domain knowledge from that of software architecture, with an important innovation of acquiring and summarizing domain knowledge automatically based on the pseudo-natural language understanding techniques. However, during PROMIS development, the authors did not find an appropriate form for the separated domain knowledge. The second part of the chapter briefly describes how the authors came to the concept of knowware. They stated that the essence of knowware is its capacity as a commercialized form of domain knowledge. It is also the third major component of IT after hardware and software. The third part of the chapter introduces the basic concepts of knowware and knowware engineering. Three life cycle models of knowware engineering and the design of corresponding knowware implementations are given. The fourth part of the chapter introduces object-oriented mixware engineering. In the fifth part of the chapter, two recent applications of knowware technique regarding smart room and Web search are reported. As a further development of PROMIS, the sixth part of the chapter discusses knowware-based redesign of its framework. In the seventh part of the chapter, the authors discuss automatic application generation and domain knowledge modeling on the J2EE platform, which combines techniques of PROMIS, knowware, and J2EE, and the development and deployment framework (i.e. PROMIS/KW**).