IntroductionThe term meta-data typically denotes "data describing other data," or descriptive information associated with a particular artifact. Beyond pure description, meta-data can serve to specify the structure, behavior, and configuration of many software systems, completely or in part. Furthermore, such configuration meta-data can often be cast in tabular forms that obey the conventions of relational databases. Examples of systems and system components that fit this paradigm include:• Relational databases, whose schemas are archetypes of tabular configuration meta-data; • Domain-targeted application-generator systems (for example, domain model meta-data 1 ); • Finite-state machines and protocols; • Graph structures; • File and transmission formats and software transducers for these formats; • Reconfigurable assemblages of parameterized software components and their installers; and • Families of procedures derived from a common template (for example, procedures written in some database-stored procedure languages lacking modern abstraction facilities). Configuration meta-data are relevant to several lifecycle stages of a software system.• At design time, system behavior can be analyzed by automated meta-data audit tools (for example, protocol validators and dependency analyzers). Meta-data can be orders of magnitude easier and faster to analyze than a similar volume of procedural code.• At build time, meta-data can drive code generators.• At install time, meta-data can control the configuration of system components and guide the process of updating from a previous system version or can make platform-specific adjustments.• At run time, a system (for example, a multilingual graphical user interface [GUI]) can interpret meta-data to configure itself. For our purposes, the distinction between metadata and ordinary data is their use in specifying a system configuration, not the time at which they are being interpreted. From this point on, all references to meta-data shall mean configuration meta-data.Using meta-data to represent system configuration can enhance clarity and maintainability, provided a suitable environment exists to display, edit, and analyze such meta-data. Fortunately, end-user tools developed for relational databases (for example, query generators, graphical front ends, and report generators) can service meta-data development environments, since relational databases are natural hosts for tabular data.Numerous commercial software design tools have been based upon tabular meta-data, especially in the database field. These include both simple data dictionaries for capturing annotated, searchable database schemas and complex system frameworks for configuring entire data-based systems from parameterized software components. Contemporary examples of such systems include Computer Associates' PLATINUM Erwin, 2 Sybase's PowerDesigner,* 3 and the Oracle* Change Management Pack. 4 Unfortunately, no such tool addresses the task of maintaining and upgrading high-volume production data-based systems efficien...
CRITTERis a system that reasons about digital hardware designs, using a a declarative representation that can represent components and signals at arbitrary levels of abstraction.CRITTER can derive the behaviors of a component's outputs given the behaviors of the inputs. it can derive the specifications a COmpOnent'S inpUtS must
We are interested in developing programs that reason about digital electronic circuits, in order to design, redesign, and debug them The first step toward developing such programs is to determine a useful way of representing the design and operation of circuits A useful representation must make apparent the roles of various circuit components in implementing the overall circuit function, and must allow a program to reason about the operation of the circuit at various levels of abstraction This paper summarizes our efforts to develop such a representation This work is closely related to other Al work on representing plans and on representing and reasoning about complex physical processes***
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