SOFTWARE PROTOTYPING WITH REUSABLE COMPONENTS.

Recently, a prototyping method has attracted attention as a software specification method. This paper proposes a prototyping method with reusable components based on knowledge engineering. This method provides support to even non-expert personnel in selecting and combining individual software components to satisfy their requirements rapidly. The proposed method is realized by an expert system, which consists of a component inference part, a parameter inference part, and an execution part. The component inference part selects the appropriate components to satisfy a user's requirement, and to determine the purpose of combining components. The parameter inference part combines parameters based on logical attribute and physical attribute. The execution part activates and carries out the roles indicated in the combined components. As an application example, an image processing expert system is described.