BUILDING TOOLS FOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERING WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNIQUES

Abstract

In this paper we address the problem of building tools for improving the software engineering process by taking advantage of artificial intelligence techniques. More specifically, we provide a representation of the evolution of a software project by means of temporal logics. Such a representation is the basis for the construction of tools for the control and management of a software project. A system for Access and Version Control (SCAV) provides a suitable test bed for our approach. In the paper we present the formalization of the history of a software project developed under SCAV, and we show how several kinds of functionalities can be easily realized. The formalization is built within the framework of the event calculus in such a way that every step of the project development determined by the execution of a SCAV operation is described as an event in the calculus. We present an implementation of the system in PROLOG, which allows for a direct and natural formulation of the event calculus rules.