A
Software Architecture
for
Reconstructability
Analysis
Kenneth Willett and Martin Zwick
Presented at the 2002 meeting
of the World Organization of Systems
and
Cybernetics and the International Institute of General Systems Studies
Abstract
Software packages
for Reconstructability Analysis (RA), as well as for related Log Linear
modeling, generally provide a fixed set of functions.
Such
packages are suitable for end-users applying RA in various domains, but
do not provide a platform for research into the RA methods themselves.
A new software system,
Occam3,
is being developed which is intended to address three goals which often
conflict with one another: to provide (1) a general and flexible infrastructure
for experimentation with RA methods and algorithms; (2) an easily-configured
system allowing methods to be combined in novel ways, without requiring
deep software expertise; and (3) a system which can be easily utilized
by domain researchers who are not computer specialists.
Meeting these goals
has led to an architecture which strictly separates functions into three
layers: the Core, which provides representation of datasets, relations,
and models; the Management Layer, which provides extensible objects for
development of new algorithms; and the Script Layer, which allows the other
facilities to be combined in novel ways to address a particular domain
analysis problem.