SYSTEMS MODELING AND PROCESS-CONTROL

With the rapidly growing complexity of software systems, systems engineers and users are often confronted with a constantly increasing variety of software tools which have to be integrated and operated. Since most systems offer no or little support for these tasks they have to be handled by well-trained specialists. This is a serious bottleneck limiting the advantages of those systems. This paper deals with aspects of systems modeling and process control supporting both system engineers and end-users. We introduce a modeling method for the control and data flow within software systems (e.g. CAD frameworks), which is powerful enough to capture both the static and dynamic properties of the system and yet is easy to understand by its users. An adequate model of the system is crucial for providing intelligent user support. We will describe how such a model can be automatically translated into rules controlling the execution of the system, thus relieving the user from having to supervise all the actions by him/herself.