The AUT Project: Applied Understanding Technology for Concept Engineering
For more than a decade I have actively been seeking a way to launch this AUT Project which, as you will see, has an even longer history behind it. I believe it’s a perfect fit with I-Campus, bringing a Technology for Understanding into the academic world’s Educational Technology. What I have to offer already has a strong track record in the real world addressing Numbers 2, 3, and 4 of the I-Campus Objectives. I plan to start right now with Objective #1! [Check them all out now, if you'd like.] Regarding #1 I presemt this quote:
"Sun 99125A1132:P300: The Tech ad deadline 430PM today!
Pied Piper Needs Java RatsLet's try to build an essentially-functional graphic-language interactive support tool in Java for use on the World Wide Web by the end of IAP!
"P325: too late ... "!
After a Sunday morning start that had gotten nowhere, after a phone call I restarted at 3PM and wrote that note and display-ad copy -- but soon gave up on the attempt to make the year-end millennium-ending issue of The Tech, and instead redoubled my preliminary preparation efforts. You see, if some talented, stalwart crew can use Java well enough to get the AUT Project a bit started, then my next Piper Piping(!) can bring along some more students, and eventually a few Profs -- you get the idea. There really AUT to be lots of things to do with this at MIT and elsewhere.
As the December 10 Preliminary Proposal deadline approached, I was most happy with my final attempt at an I-Campus Proposal, with its eye-catching, mind's-eye-catching opening paragraph:
"RSADT: The Enabler of Applied Understanding Technology (AUT)
"RSADT stands for Rigorous SADT, the culmination of the multi-modeling potential of my 25-year-old Structured Analysis and Design Technique (TM) that will support true Concept Engineering (not conceptual engineering, which would be quite a different matter) — in the ultimate domain where ideas are formed and transformed. SADT does not solve any problem, for it is a calculus, an algebra in the original sense of the Arabic root, which concerns not top down factoring or breaking-down into components, but rather the everywhere knitting together that heals a broken bone!
— a precisely opposite view to decomposition of whole into parts! ... [A] sort of elation and wonder ... sprang into my mind some five years ago when (as is so often my habit) I first looked up the complete entry for [that word] in my Webster's Third International Dictionary."
That proposal comes with a companion closing section:
"An Overview of the Structured Analysis and Design Technique, SADT
"In SADT, SA is the graphic Modeling Language and DT is the Design Technique of its proper practice that brings the technical use of natural language into The Digital Age — where it can provide Perfect Understanding (mathematically defined) for both teams of people and for machine-systems, alike. ..."
-- and in a total of six pages (soon-to-be peppered with links to my other background preparations) -- it is fully up-to-date.
-- Or so I thought until the very day of the Preliminary Proposal deadline on Friday! While seeking something else, at home I found a 1994 folder targeted to the formation of a SofTech coalition bid with industry partners in the Advanced Technology Program (ATP, which offered matching government funds) run by DoE's NIST (the old Bureau of Standards) at that time. Called "AUT3", this third and final proposal had been lost to me since that time.
Applied Understanding Technology (AUT)
A New Capability for Enabling Concept Engineering
The Need -- The Prospect -- The Product -- The Rationale -- The Pragmatics -- The Result -- IDEF -- Basics -- Modeling -- Sharing -- Inheritance
Reading that AUT3 proposal in amazement, I found that it needed only a very few minor edits to match exactly my I-Campus intentions. It now is my favorite! Evidently it was the source of my "algebra" discovery in the first place!
I have left in place a few redundancies between these two proposal documents, and have left in the references to the Federal Information Processing Standard FIPS#183 on the IDEF0 fraction of RSADT/AUT which was rushed through NIST for DoD-wide Business Process Re-Engineering (BPRE), aimed at saving some $50 billion of taxpayer money! When I finished editing the AUT3 Web page -- without any retouching, the standard Netscape printout matched headings to page-tops as though I had labored to make it so! Check it out.
A major reason that I prefer AUT3 is its closing section (and its reference to inheritance ):
"Inheritance
"Skipping nonessential further details ... [W]hen a parent-box’s meaning is decomposed into child-box parts, ... [t]his is inheritance, proper. But the inheritance of any box for which there is an upward-pointing support mechanism arrow potentially is augmented by subatomic calling details.
"Specifically, when such a supported box is detailed, ...
"None of the current Object-Oriented (OO) approaches reflect this precision of understanding of inheritance... The details of this aspect of pure Understanding Technology and their influence on the OO community may be a significant output from the AUT Project."
There is a lot of rich research to be plumbed if the AUT Project can get launched as part of I-Campus.
So why do I consider myself a Pied Piper seeking some JavaRats? Until last December (when, disappointingly, the deal fell through) I had spent considerable efffort preparing to self fund the adaptation of a commercial SADT/IDEF0 support tool (Triune's AblePM, see the Publication Format example). The changes were to be just enough for me to generate SA Diagrams incorporating my latest (and final) graphical syntax changes. Then I could begin a book, and later, perhaps, do new Web-support for SADT's Reader/Author Cycle (see the I-Campus Proposal's 1986+89 "Worknet" ICPropWorknet pre-Web, UROP and NRC reference). A picture-only introduction to what's involved in making SA Tool support in Java in January seems to me to be the ideal student-powered launch for the AUT Project under I-Campus's #1 stated objective: Creating technologies and content to improve student learning.
Nothing yet is scheduled for IAP, but if the Commentary response for this AUT Project proposal of mine flowers, I will update my AUT Project Web page regularly, to keep everybody informed. Please do take an interest, for this work needs to get done. There's nothing like RSADT/AUT, and I'm getting old! -- but not too old to inspire students and graduates, as well, still, if given the chance.
Link to companion I-Campus Proposal