Design and engineering domains use abstract artifact descriptions and standard designs. This paper reviews plans, the blueprint-like descriptions used in software engineering. Our goal is to provide a framework fro discussion and research. We first focus on the nature of plans independent of their use or representation. Next we consider the use of plans in a software engineering, particularly in automated programming, automated program understanding, reuse, and language design. Measures and methodologies are given for characterizing plan use in program populations and domains. Then we review some issues that arise in plan-based automatic software engineering. Plan libraries are discussed in terms of their organization, non-plan content, and performance implications. Plan representation issues are illustrated by representations used in program understating and the problem of dual use for programming and understanding.
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Original:
1-Dec-1994
Update: 2-Dec-1994