Ten commandments of formal methods

Bowen, Jonathan P.; Hinchey, Michael G.

doi:10.1109/2.375178

Cited by 165 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Their disadvantage is that they are not easy to understand for humans [24] and limit the expressiveness of the knowledge engineer. Apart from the possibility to prove properties, formal PSMs have the additional advantage of being a step closer to an implemented system.…”

Section: Types Of Psm Librariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge engineering: Principles and methods

Studer

Benjamins

Fensel

1998

Data & Knowledge Engineering

2,671

1,008

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This paper gives an overview about the development of the field of Knowledge Engineering over the last 15 years. We discuss the paradigm shift from a transfer view to a modeling view and describe two approaches which considerably shaped research in Knowledge Engineering: Role-limiting Methods and Generic Tasks. To illustrate various concepts and methods which evolved in the last years we describe three modeling frameworks: CommonKADS, MIKE, and PROTÉGÉ-II. This description is supplemented by discussing some important methodological developments in more detail: specification languages for knowledge-based systems, problem-solving methods, and ontologies. We conclude with outlining the relationship of Knowledge Engineering to Software Engineering, Information Integration and Knowledge Management. Key WordsKnowledge Engineering, Knowledge Acquisition, Problem-Solving Method, Ontology, Information Integration IntroductionIn earlier days research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) was focused on the development of 2 formalisms, inference mechanisms and tools to operationalize Knowledge-based Systems (KBS). Typically, the development efforts were restricted to the realization of small KBSs in order to study the feasibility of the different approaches.Though these studies offered rather promising results, the transfer of this technology into commercial use in order to build large KBSs failed in many cases. The situation was directly comparable to a similar situation in the construction of traditional software systems, called "software crisis" in the late sixties: the means to develop small academic prototypes did not scale up to the design and maintenance of large, long living commercial systems. In the same way as the software crisis resulted in the establishment of the discipline Software Engineering the unsatisfactory situation in constructing KBSs made clear the need for more methodological approaches.So the goal of the new discipline Knowledge Engineering (KE) is similar to that of Software Engineering: turning the process of constructing KBSs from an art into an engineering discipline. This requires the analysis of the building and maintenance process itself and the development of appropriate methods, languages, and tools specialized for developing KBSs.Subsequently, we will first give an overview of some important historical developments in KE: special emphasis will be put on the paradigm shift from the so-called transfer approach to the so-called modeling approach. This paradigm shift is sometimes also considered as the transfer from first generation expert systems to second generation expert systems [43]. Based on this discussion Section 2 will be concluded by describing two prominent developments in the late eighties: Role-limiting Methods [99] and Generic Tasks [36]. In Section 3 we will present some modeling frameworks which have been developed in recent years:, and PROTÈGÈ-II [123]. Section 4 gives a short overview of specification languages for KBSs. Problem-solving methods have been a major research ...

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Section: Types Of Psm Librariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge engineering: Principles and methods

Studer

Benjamins

Fensel

1998

Data & Knowledge Engineering

2,671

1,008

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“…Although not adopted widely besides where the demand is on mission-critical and significantly complex software, the need for bringing formal methods as a standard component of the software development workflow is obvious: every mature field of engineering relies heavily on its mathematical foundation (Bowen, 2006).…”

Section: Formal Methods For Aosementioning

confidence: 99%

Motivation for a new formal framework for agent-oriented software engineering

Ahmad

Rahimi²

2009

IJAOSE

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Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) poses several challenges to the traditional theory and practice of software engineering with the emergence of a variety of theories and tools proposed to deal with this challenge. Agent frameworks with formal foundations have an important role to play in this scenario by allowing analysis based on a mathematical model. It is our contention that the available frameworks and languages do not fulfil all aspects of agent-based system analysis and development. We perform a survey of the available formal theories and tools for Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and derive a strong motivation for a new formal framework to support AOSE. Several aspects of agent behaviour in this framework have been inspired by the popular Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model of cognitive agents. The new framework introduced concisely in the second half tackles the issues raised in the first half, including those regarding mobility, proactive behaviour, organisation and inter-agent communication.Keywords: intelligent agents; multi-agent systems; MAS; formal methods; agent-oriented software engineering; AOSE.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ahmad, R. and Rahimi, S. Biographical notes: Dr. Raheel Ahmad is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Manchester College, USA. He is currently performing active research in the fields of information visualisation, computer graphics, multi-agent systems and software engineering. His immediate research involves effective communication of information through the medium of graphics. Dr. Ahmad was awarded a graduate fellowship as an outstanding PhD candidate. His research interests have led to several publications in international proceedings and conferences, such as IEEE affiliated conferences, as well as journal articles. He was responsible for the installation and deployment of a high-performance computing cluster for the Computer Science Department at Southern Illinois University (SIU), USA. This is intended as a research tool for all the departments in the school that may benefit from the available computing power. Motivation for a new formal framework for AOSE

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“…Formal methods are almost a necessity when it comes to developing systems in critical scenarios such as military, medical systems, and air traffic control [1,2]. Although they represent a significant investment in time and expertise, the advantages are significant: formal specification of a system by itself can be useful in terms of getting the system requirements right by eliminating errors at the design phase; verification of a system can allow designers to ascertain the correctness of a system design -if it is behaving properly, in a correct fashion, and if it is functioning according to a set of requirements; further analysis of a formally specified system can provide significant insights into its internals such as its performance; and with proper and mature tools available, the formal specification can be used directly or indirectly as a guide to the final implementation of the system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Intelligence-Aware Process Calculus for Multi-Agent System Modeling

Ahmad

Rahimi

Gupta

2007

2007 International Conference on Integration of Knowledge Intensive Multi-Agent Systems

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In this paper we propose an agent modeling language named CAML that provides a comprehensive frameworkfor representing all relevant aspects of a multiagent system: specially, its configuration and the reasoning abilities of its constituent agents. The configuration modeling aspect of the language supports natural grouping and mobility, and the reasoning framework is inspired by an extension of the popular BDI theory of modeling cognitive skills ofagents. We present the motivation behind the development of the language, its syntax, and an informal semantics.

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Ten commandments of formal methods

Cited by 165 publications

References 13 publications

Knowledge engineering: Principles and methods

Knowledge engineering: Principles and methods

Motivation for a new formal framework for agent-oriented software engineering

An Intelligence-Aware Process Calculus for Multi-Agent System Modeling

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