A blackboard architecture for intelligent assistance in software maintenance

Abstract

System design recovery and impact analysis are critical phases in the process of software maintenance. It is argued that the interdependence of abstraction recovery tools and application domains plays a key role in providing intelligent assistance in software maintenance, and the use of a blackboard model to address the issue of knowledge sources integration is advocated. A software maintenance expert sytem (SMES) based on a blackboard architecture has been developed to evaluate the approach. Explicit links between specification, design and implementation objects have been represented in the blackboard working memory, as well as the design decisions in the abstraction recovery process. These links are then used in the software evolution process to support impact analysis.