Automated Software Design Using Descriptive Design Knowledge

In this research we focus on understanding the nature of the knowledge used during the various phases of the softwaredevelopment process. We have found that there are mainly two types of knowledge involved in software development: (1) descriptive knowledge represented by conversion and coding rules, e.g., a rule for splitting a class into two; and (2) prescriptive knowledge required for deployment of global or local strategies at a micro design level; e.g., knowledge required to answer the question why should a class should be split into two? In this paper we report on a prototype system called Use- Case driven Development Assistant (UCDA) to extract and reuse the descriptive knowledge for automated object-oriented software design. The system receives as its input a user request document written in natural language and automatically generates skeleton code

Keywords:

Automated software design , Knowledge engineering. Rational Unified Process , Use-case modeling , Robustness diagram , CASE tool