An Overview of Reflection and Its Use in Cooperation

This paper describes a number of approaches to the development of more intelligent and more adaptable software. The paper introduces the notion of reflection and surveys two major styles: task and programming reflection. The paper then introduces a new form, viz operational reflection, based on the integration of these styles. This form of reflection is applied to cooperative environments and enables local database systems to be surrounded by a layer of metalevel software. This is used to capture domain and operational knowledge, and to describe, at least in part, remote systems and to monitor task-oriented activities. Thus we can turn a set of discrete database systems into a cooperative environment. Keywords: cooperation,reflection,metaobjects 1. Introduction 1.1. Intelligence in Information Systems How often, when using an information system, do we ask ourselves: "I wonder why it did that?" or "How on earth did that happen?". Unfortunately, the questions are rhetorical. We do not..