Building SW apps

Dear all,

This is very much beginner territory, but I'm working totally on my own so
any help would be very much appreciated.  The question is: How would I
implement this application?.

Say I have a programme that will manage the tasks and resources involved in
building a house.  I need to be able to sequence my tasks in the correct
order and buy the materials.  So, each activity will be dependent on
conditions being fulfilled e.g. don't fill foundations with concrete until:
- holes dug
- cement and aggregate bought
- cement mixer on site
- it is not raining.

Now, I can call on an ontology to reference this project, which contains a
set of conditions and restrictions between tasks and resources in the
project using OWL (e.g. weather condition for pouring concrete must be dry).

I want my builder to have an application which provides him with a list of
instructions which describe tasks, for the above example these would be:

- dig the holes
- buy cement and aggregate
- get cement mixer on site
- check that it isn't raining.

(I would also like my application to say, 'everything is on site and it's
going to rain tomorrow so do it today'.)

Now, this is where I'm getting vague(r?).  I need a programming environment
which has an API that can handle the tags in OWL (or RDF) e.g. Jena.  So I
write the programme in, say, Java and call on this API so that I can enforce
the conditions laid down in the OWL file?  Then the builder can use the
programme to write a list of things to do.

So, why don't I just hard code the restrictions and conditions into the
application?  Is it because the OWL file acts as a kind of configuration
file for the app? (separating the reasoning from the data).  But then isn't
that just about loose coupling which should be a programming aim anyway?

Ivor

Received on Sunday, 22 May 2005 19:38:08 UTC