A Case-Based Design Browser to Facilitate Reuse of Software Artifacts

Abstract

Large corporations and government agencies often incur unnecessary costs and errors in conceptual software design due to the lack of an ‘institutional memory’ and the specialization of systems. A design browser is introduced as the foundation of an institutional memory to support software reuse. The Design Browser is a combination of an artificial intelligence paradigm known as case-based reasoning and a conceptual framework that presents developers a unified structure through which to understand, compare, and contrast related design experience. The case-based system contains design information about various existing software designs. The conceptual framework provides software developers with a common vocabulary and a frame of reference in which to view the existing software. The Design Browser and empirical results of its evaluation are presented.