Research in advanced formal theorem-proving techniques

The results are summarised of a project aimed at the design and implementation of computer languages to aid in expressing problem solving procedures in several areas of artificial intelligence including automatic programming, theorem proving, and robot planning. The principal results of the project were the design and implementation of two complete systems, QA4 and QLISP, and their preliminary experimental use. The various applications of both QA4 and QLISP are given

Arcadia, a software development environment research project

The research objectives of the Arcadia project are two-fold: discovery and development of environment architecture principles and creation of novel software development tools, particularly powerful analysis tools, which will function within an environment built upon these architectural principles.Work in the architecture area is concerned with providing the framework to support integration while also supporting the often conflicting goal of extensibility. Thus, this area of research is directed toward achieving external integration by providing a consistent, uniform user interface, while still admitting customization and addition of new tools and interface functions. In an effort to also attain internal integration, research is aimed at developing mechanisms for structuring and managing the tools and data objects that populate a software development environment, while facilitating the insertion of new kinds of tools and new classes of objects.The unifying theme of work in the tools area is support for effective analysis at every stage of a software development project. Research is directed toward tools suitable for analyzing pre-implementation descriptions of software, software itself, and towards the production of testing and debugging tools. In many cases, these tools are specifically tailored for applicability to concurrent, distributed, or real-time software systems.The initial focus of Arcadia research is on creating a prototype environment, embodying the architectural principles, which supports Ada1 software development. This prototype environment is itself being developed in Ada.Arcadia is being developed by a consortium of researchers from the University of California at Irvine, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, TRW, Incremental Systems Corporation, and The Aerospace Corporation. This paper delineates the research objectives and describes the approaches being taken, the organization of the research endeavor, and current status of the work

Next generation software environments : principles, problems, and research directions

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of research and development in software environments. Conferences have been devoted to the topic of practical environments, journal papers produced, and commercial systems sold. Given all the activity, one might expect a great deal of consensus on issues, approaches, and techniques. This is not the case, however. Indeed, the term "environment" is still used in a variety of conflicting ways. Nevertheless substantial progress has been made and we are at least nearing consensus on many critical issues.The purpose of this paper is to characterize environments, describe several important principles that have emerged in the last decade or so, note current open problems, and describe some approaches to these problems, with particular emphasis on the activities of one large-scale research program, the Arcadia project. Consideration is also given to two related topics: empirical evaluation and technology transition. That is, how can environments and their constituents be evaluated, and how can new developments be moved effectively into the production sector

A GENERIC SHELL APPROACH FOR KMOWLEDGE ELICITATION AMD REPRESENTATION IM IDSS

This study focuses on issues of knowledge representation and elicitation in Intelligent DSS (IDSS) environments. The types, characteristics, levels of logical view, and the levels of specificity and abstraction of passive and active knowledge in IDSS are discussed. A language for knowledge description, whose syntactical objects are entities, relationships, transformations, and constraints, and which allows four levels of specificity and abstraction is proposed. Then, a graphical, semantic model for the conceptual-schema representation of passive and active knowledge, called the extended ERA Model, is presented. Finally, it is argued that a multi-paradigm programming environment is required for the information-schema representation of the different types of knowledge in IDSS, and to support reasoning, inference, and inheritance. A LOOPS implementation of the knowledge representation and elicitation model is described in detail

Research on knowledge representation, machine learning, and knowledge acquisition

Research in knowledge representation, machine learning, and knowledge acquisition performed at Knowledge Systems Lab. is summarized. The major goal of the research was to develop flexible, effective methods for representing the qualitative knowledge necessary for solving large problems that require symbolic reasoning as well as numerical computation. The research focused on integrating different representation methods to describe different kinds of knowledge more effectively than any one method can alone. In particular, emphasis was placed on representing and using spatial information about three dimensional objects and constraints on the arrangement of these objects in space. Another major theme is the development of robust machine learning programs that can be integrated with a variety of intelligent systems. To achieve this goal, learning methods were designed, implemented and experimented within several different problem solving environments

A Visual aide for designing regular expression parsers

This paper describes a thesis project in which a visually-oriented design utility is constructed in Interlisp-D for the Xerox 1108 Artificial Intelligence Workstation. This utility aids in the design of Regular Expression Parsers by visually simulating the operation of a parser. A textual program, suitable for utilization in the construction of a compiler scanner or other similar processor may be produced by the utility

Robot computer problem solving system

The conceptual, experimental, and practical phases of developing a robot computer problem solving system are outlined. Robot intelligence, conversion of the programming language SAIL to run under the THNEX monitor, and the use of the network to run several cooperating jobs at different sites are discussed

Steps to an advanced Ada programming environment

Conceptual simplicity, tight coupling of tools, and effective support of host-target software development will characterize advanced Ada programming support environments. Several important principles have been demonstrated in the Arcturus system, including template-assisted Ada editing, command completion using Ada as a command language, and combining the advantages of interpretation and compliation. Other principles, relating to analysis, testing, and debugging of concurrent Ada programs, have appeared in other contexts. This paper discusses several of these topics, considers how they can be integrated, and argues for their inclusion in an environment appropriate for software development in the late 1980's

PCG: A prototype incremental compilation facility for the SAGA environment, appendix F

A programming environment supports the activity of developing and maintaining software. New environments provide language-oriented tools such as syntax-directed editors, whose usefulness is enhanced because they embody language-specific knowledge. When syntactic and semantic analysis occur early in the cycle of program production, that is, during editing, the use of a standard compiler is inefficient, for it must re-analyze the program before generating code. Likewise, it is inefficient to recompile an entire file, when the editor can determine that only portions of it need updating. The pcg, or Pascal code generation, facility described here generates code directly from the syntax trees produced by the SAGA syntax directed Pascal editor. By preserving the intermediate code used in the previous compilation, it can limit recompilation to the routines actually modified by editing

A preliminary philosophy for ARCTURUS : an advanced highly-integrated programming environment

At Irvine, we are currently in the initial stages of designing a programming environment, called Arcturus. This paper is a report of work in progress giving our preliminary philosophy and expressing preliminary thoughts on an initial Arcturus design.Arcturus is an advanced, highly-integrated programming environment intended for use in the late 1980s. We assume that programmers will each be equipped with large flat-screen displays driven by powerful desk-top computers linked into local networks by high band-width channels, and that shared central resources such as archival databases and multifont printing systems will be available.Arcturus is aimed at "programming in the large", that is, programming by many people, on large programs, with maintenance lifetimes of many years. In such a user setting, problems of management, documentation, training, testing, version control, diagnosis, and debugging must be solved effectively by people who, for the most part, are not authors or designers of the original system.Some preliminary design concepts that Arcturus supports are as follows:(1) Arcturus supports a "rapid prototyping" language -- a very high level, strongly extensible language useful for rapid construction of working prototypes of systems (emphasizing cheap, rapid construction at the expense of running efficiency and polish).(2) Arcturus supports refinement of these prototype programs, or protoprograms, for short, into programs written in program design languages (or PDLs) , which express designs. PDL programs are ultimately refined into concrete, detailed, optimized programs expressed in an implementation language.(3) Arcturus supports a computer-based form of program documentation in which program forms at various levels of abstraction can have attribute/value pairs attached to any of their granules (granules being well-formed program units of any size such as constants, variables, operators, expressions, statements, blocks, and modules) and in which the attributes may be selectively viewed and queried to suit the needs of different audiences.(4) The notion of attribute/value attachment to granules of program forms also supplies the principal mechanism for promoting a high degree of environment integration. By attaching to program granules such attributes as clocks, counters, units of programmer and system resources spent, version descriptions, access controls, descriptions of tests passed, task schedule data, computer sizing estimates, and so on, smooth integration between the activities of designers, managers, testers, maintainers, programmers, and documenters can be achieved, and environment tools can cooperate with each other conveniently.(5) Arcturus supports an advanced programmer's workstation, an interactive programmer's notebook, and extensive software management support tools.In the framework of the Arcturus effort, we have attempted to rethink afresh issues of epistemology related to the programming process that impact documentation, fault diagnosis, maintenance, training, and software upgrade, so that the design of Arcturus will reflect the relationships between the different kinds of expertise that are required in the programming process. We are also attempting to formulate theories of documentation, debugging, and maintenance to guide the development of computer-based support capabilities that assist in the performance of these activities.In this context, this paper contains preliminary, tentative expositions of background philosophy and rationale that guide our present thinking about Arcturus