Meta-Knowledge in systems design: panacea ...or undelivered promise?

Abstract

In this study we present a review of the emerging field of meta-knowledge components as practised over the past decade among a variety of practitioners. We use the artificially-defined term 'meta-knowledge' to encompass all those different but overlapping notions used by the Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering communities to represent reusable modelling frameworks: ontologies, problem-solving methods, experience factories and experience bases, patterns, to name a few. We then elaborate on how meta-knowledge is deployed in the context of system's design to improve its reliability by consistency checking, enhance its reuse potential, and manage its knowledge sharing. We speculate on its usefulness and explore technologies for supporting deployment of meta-knowledge. We argue that, despite the different approaches being followed in systems design by divergent communities, meta-knowledge is present in all cases, in a tacit or explicit form, and its utilisation depends on pragmatic aspects which we try to identify and critically review on criteria of effectiveness.

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