The Purdue PSE Kernel: Towards a Kernel for Building PSEs
Sanjiva Weerawarana, Elias N. Houstis, John R. Rice, Ann Christine Catlin, Margaret Gaitatzes, Shahani Markus, Tzveten T. Drashansky · Purdue e-Pubs (Purdue University System) · 1996
Problem Solvillg Environments (PSEs) are vef)' high level software e/lVironmems that provide all the facilities for dealing with some class of problems.It is clear that building PSEs is a costly endeavor bOll! ill tenlls of the persOII-years required and the diversity of knowledge alld expertise required.This paper is about the Pllnllle PSE Kemel (PPK), a softworefrolllework designed to assist ill Ihe deve/opmem ofPSE.f.PPK assumes a fairly gel/eral model of PSEs where PSEs are viewed as a collectio1l of communicating, cooperating entities.The architecture of PPK is designed to provide all the infrastructure needed to build app/icatioll PSEs that adhere to this nwdel.This model is realized ill terms of atl electronic notebook for user ill1eractioll with the PSE.an object mal/ager for storillg all the problem alld solll1iml cOII/pollellts and a software bus for supportillg the commullication alld illtegration /leeds of the C011l-pOl/ellts of the PSE.An embedded, customizable programming langl/age is provided within the electronic notebook to allow users to "program" a problem solving proceS!i by specifying a high level script.This base arcllitectllre of PPK is augmented witll a set of domain-specific toolkits which provide the required infrostrtlcmre ill key areas such as symbolic computa/ioll, computational illtelligence, computational geomerry and nl/meric cOlllpllfatioll.In addition.a high level composition framework allows IIsers to compose PSE from existing PSE componellts.This paper describes the overall design of PPK and a prototype ofthe basic PPKframework tllOt we have developed.All example PSE built using PPK has demonstrated it.fviabiliry as a keme/for building PSEs.