Component-Based Engineering of Knowledge-Enabled Systems: Research Vision and Strategy

摘要

Australia's Strategic Policy assigns the highest capability development priority to the achievement of the 'knowledge edge' over our adversaries and identifies a single Command Support System that exhibits flexibility, cost-effectiveness, robustness and adaptivity as being an important enabler of the knowledge edge. This emphasis on the knowledge edge is reinforced in the Defence 2000 White Paper 2, which states that the knowledge edge 'will be the foundation of our military capability over the coming decades'. The Software Systems Engineering (SSE) group of ITD is currently conducting research into new software engineering principles and practices, collectively referred to as component-based software engineering (CBSE), which are expected to meet the requirements of cost-effectiveness and flexibility in the development of command support systems. In addition, knowledge-based techniques, and in particular intelligent agents, provide the opportunity to incorporate adaptivity and robustness into software systems through the use of machine-learning, automated reasoning and encapsulation of domain knowledge. In this paper we outline an extension of the Software Systems Engineering Group's research into CBSE to investigate ways in which intelligent agents can be used to exploit the combined advantages of component-based software engineering and know ledge-based techniques for the development of software for military applications.