MODEL-K: KADS Grows Legs

To close the gap between knowledge level and symbol level, we present MODEL-K, a language that allows both, to specify KADS conceptual models and to extend them to operational systems. This leads to systems that correctly reflect their underlying conceptual model by retaining structural correspondence between model and implementation. The resulting systems are more perspicuous, easier to communicate and to explain to the user, and better to maintain. Since both, modelling and operationalizing may be interleaved, MODEL-K supports the integration of prototyping in model-based methodologies like KADS as early as possible and on the highest level possible. We illustrate the MODEL-K language with a conceptual model for assignment tasks. We demonstrate how the model, originally developed for the domain of office room allocation, can be reused for an application assigning gates to airplanes.