An Ontology Based Reuse Algorithm towards Process Planning in Software Development

The process planning task for specified design provisions in software development can be significantly developed by referencing the knowledge reuse scheme. Reuse is considered to be one of the most promising techniques to improve software excellence and productivity. Reuse during software development depends much on the existing design knowledge in meta-model, a "read only" repository of information. We have proposed, an ontology based reuse algorithm towards process planning in software development. According to the common conceptual base facilitated by ontology and the characteristics of knowledge, the concepts and the entities are represented into meta-model and endeavor prospects. The relations between these prospects and its linkage knowledge are used to construct an ontology based reuse algorithm. In addition, our experiment illustrates realization of process planning in software development by practicing this algorithm. Subsequently, its benefits are delineated. Reuse practice has become a significant issue in the field of software engineering. The increasing demand for progressively larger and complex systems is one of the causes that reuse has been preferred when dealing with such tribulations in software development. Reuse also responds to an increasing insist for highly reliable, high excellence and less expensive systems. Accordingly, knowledge reuse will benefit and improve the process planning in software development greatly. Process planning is an intermediate phase between design and implementation. Lucidity and prescribed specification of concepts play a key role in the inclusion of reuse in the process planning. Therefore, a most important issue is to build a common conceptual base characterized by knowledge. Our exploration focuses on this task through the use of defined system elements and layering principal, illustrating various prospects. We have proposed a knowledge based process planning method and it seems indispensable and potential in real applications. As to knowledge-based process planning, a significant prose already exists for general software implementation processes. Ontology is the basis for the sharing of resources, which provides a common understanding of field knowledge. The scope of ontology application is widespread, and its pursuit is large and whole, and applicable to entire software engineering environment (1) (2). Therefore, we construct and use a fixed ontology oriented procedure through locating the linkage knowledge. When executing it, irrelevant knowledge items would consequently be avoided in knowledge retrieval so as the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge reuse may be improved. This may help train novice users to quickly become familiar with the process and achieve efficient and high quality builds. Ontology has been defined as the vocabulary of unambiguous domain-related concepts and meanings of the concepts anchored in consensus domain knowledge (3). Also, ontology may provide a reusable and sharable information model. It is popular in engineering knowledge modeling and retrieval for its devastating searching ability (4). Thus, we have proposed an ontological knowledge modeling in Section II that illustrates the meta-level descriptions to divulge the building blocks of it. Based on ontological knowledge modeling, Section III confers ontology based reuse algorithm towards process planning in software development. Section IV exemplifies a case study to substantiate the efficacy of ontology based reuse algorithm. Finally, we conclude with the advantage of practicing it towards process planning in software