EPISODIC REFINEMENT OF EPISODIC SKELETAL-PLAN REFINEMENT

This paper describes successive reformulations of skeletal-plan refine ment as a problem-solving method. We argue that, whereas ideas derived from planning literature helped to determine the overall structure of the planning systems, domain-derived considerations and architectural framework in which the systems were implemented played important role s in these reformulations, We illustrate the argument by describing a new framework that integrates knowledge-based applications with a temp oral data-abstraction and data-management system. In this framework, b oth applications and temporal-data mediators are encapsulated as Commo n Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) objects. The skeletal-pla n refinement method itself is formulated as a collection of cooperatin g CORBA objects. We have found that we needed to reformulate the metho d ontology, mapping relations and control structure of the skeletal-pl anning problem-solving method in this framework. Our experience sugges ts that problem-solving methods are not necessarily fixed structures t hat can be plugged into arbitrary application environments, and that w e need to develop a flexible configuration environment and expressive mapping formalisms to accommodate the requirements of application envi ronments. These requirements include the ways data are made available and the ways software components interact with one another. (C) 1998 A cademic Press Limited.