Construction of an Intellegient Database Application Development Environment Using Object-oriented Concept

Abstract

Throughout the world, managers are beginning to recognize the potential of computers and information processing technology to help them cope with today's complex business world. When the demand for new or expanded computer-based information systems grows rapidly, it far exceeds the capability of present DP organizations to meet this demand. One feasible solution is to allow end-users to function as their own developers. However, to accomplish this transfer of application development from DP professional to DP user, support must be provided to these end-user developers. One promising technical approach toward this end is to provide them an intelligent development aid. Such a development aid should contain general knowledge about system development to provide assistance to its users, and it must be easy to use. Two techniques have been recognized to have great potential for the development of such an intelligent development aid. They are the knowledge-based technology and the object-oriented concept. The purpose of this thesis was to explore the feasibility of developing an intelligent development aid for end­users by using the object-oriented concept and knowledge­based technology. This study investigates this feasibility by developing a conceptual model for such a development aid. A prototype was implemented to test the validity of the conceptual model. The prototype demostrates that the conceptual model can be implemented and that the resulting system does exhibit the kind of interaction process desired.