Inverted Decision Tables and Their Application: Automating the Translation of Specifications to Programs
Leon S. Levy, Holly Stump · AT&T Technical Journal · 1985
Code generation techniques are used to program an application characterized by complexity arising from many special cases, and rapid changes due to advances in the state of the art. A formal notation — an inverted decision table written in a propositional logic form — is developed as a means for allowing expert users to describe the application in a knowledge base that code generators then can use to create production code. The complete system described in the paper automatically transforms a one thousand-page specification into a running program. The development of this system is an example of the formalization of the specification of a complex application. In this case the application is a part of the Job Management Operations System, an operational support system to aid regional Bell Operating Company construction and engineering processes. The techniques described, however, can be generalized.