Design and Experimentation of an Expert System for Programming In-the-Large

The results of artificial intelligence research are often important to other areas than computer science itself. One area which presents a wide variety of potential applications of artificial intelligence tecniques, is the area of software production. A well knoun role of artificial intelligence in software technology has been in the area of program synthesis; several experimental systems based on different methodological approaches have been deveLoped in the past (Barstou (1979); BarteLs et al. (1981); Green (1977); Green and Barstou (1978); Green et al. (1979); Manna and Waldinger (1979); Smith (1981)). At the Milan Polytechnic Artificial Intelligence Project, the BIS system (Caio et al. (1982)) based on an approach oriented to problem reduction methodology for problem solving has been developed. In our opinion, the recent evolution of knowledge-based systems is showing how the role of artificial intelLigence can be further extended in dealing uith the conceptual analysis of complex probLems and applications. While the complexity of the problems solvable by a program synthesizer is of Limited size, we may expect that a knowledge-based system can assist the designer of a camp lex software system devising its modular architecture. This activity is called within software technology programming in-the-large, as opposed to programming izhe-smalL, i.e. the classical programming activity devoted to design the data structures and algorithms needed for representing and solving a given problem.