A framework supporting the utilization of domain knowledge embedded in software

Software systems embed in them knowledge about the domain in which they operate. However, this knowledge is “latent”. Making such knowledge accessible could be of great value to the organization both as a source of explicit knowledge and to systems development and maintenance. We propose a framework aimed at making domain knowledge embedded in software explicit. The framework is based on identifying domain knowledge acquired during the development process (especially in requirements analysis) and formalizing it. The software architecture is then partitioned into two parts: one represents the domain knowledge and the other responsible for the actual processing (using this knowledge). A specific object-oriented design approach is suggested to accomplish this partitioning.