论文信息 - A new approach to the use of decision tables in software engineering

A new approach to the use of decision tables in software engineering

JAN V ANTHIENEN ELKEDRIES Katholieke U niversiteit Leuven Department of Applied Economic Sciences Dekenstraat 2, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium) The ability of the decision table to represent complex decision situations in a clear, well-structured manner, easy to check for completeness, consistency and correctness, makes it a valuable tool in software engineering. In the past, however, almost all the attention went to an efficient processing of the table and few or none to its development. Moreover, it was always assumed that the decision table, once designed, also had to be specified as a table in the software specification, leading to a variety of syntactical problems. In this paper, a new approach to the use of decision tables in software engineering is proposed. It is argued that an automated construction process of the decision table offers a solution to the above mentioned problems and allows an effective application of the decision table technique in software engineering. The proposed approach has been applied successfully in numerous real world applications.

Jan Vanthienen | E Dries

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