An integrated expert system framework for software quality assurance

A software quality assurance framework using knowledge-based engineering technology is described. The knowledge-engineering technology uses an object-oriented database to store the knowledge (the software quality information), and rules and meta-rules are its inferential knowledge. A dependency-based truth maintenance system based on hypothetical reasoning is used for design evaluation of the software quality. This framework can provide knowledge-based assistance for quality assurance throughout the entire software development cycle. To ensure high quality software and achieve cost-effective software development and maintenance, software metrics are used during the entire software development cycle to measure and predict the quality of software products. Various metrics for software attributes for all phases of the software development cycle will be collected and stored in the object-oriented database. The integration of the knowledge base with the software quality framework provides a wide range of support to the development of large-scale software systems