ROPE: A Rule-Oriented Programming Environment for Adaptive, Integrated Multiple Systems
Cheng Hsu, Gilbert Babin, Troy Ny · 1992
Growth and change; these two words are at the root of today’s information system problems. The challenge is not only how to integrate “islands” of information across the enterprise, but also keep them in sync with the changing needs and technology. Presently, integration in most environments is conceived without also considering evolution. Even when change is included in design, the technology available currently is not sufficient to support evolution in distributed, heterogeneous environments. A case in point is the fact that most connections of systems are achieved by hard-coding the links among them. Even when these links are implemented using rule-based shells, these shells themselves are fixed in the sense that they cannot evolve while maintaining global synergies. This makes future growth and change