TOWARDS A JOINT LIFE-CYCLE FOR SOFTWARE AND KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING

As software engineering and knowledge engineering are studied in more depth and increasingly larger systems are developed in the field of knowledge engineering both disciplines are converging into a single life-cycle. In this paper, we propose a conical-spiral type life cycle, arranged in two dimensions (the spiral) for the development of classical software systems and three dimensions (the conical-spiral) for the knowledge engineering life cycle. To arrive at this convergence, a brief history of Software Engineering is presented, and the peculiarities of Knowledge-Based Systems are showed. Then, an example is presented to show how the two branches of engineering are essential in solving important problems and the possible integration of software engineering and knowledge engineering is discussed. Finally, a proposal of integrator life-cycle is explained.