Semi-Formal Functional Software Modeling with TMK

Abstract

The Task-Method-Knowledge (TMK) modeling language is a formal mechanism for describing a software system. It was created as a knowledge representation framework for intelligent systems. The main idea behind TMK is that effective reasoning about a system is supported by a description of both what a system does and how it works. TMK models are referred to as functional models because they focus on describing and decomposing the functions of systems. Because TMK models were designed for use in artificial intelligent systems, existing versions of the TMK language require the enormous precision and formality necessary to support automatic processing. However, the basic idea behind TMK, that functional models of systems are useful for reasoning about those systems, also seems appropriate for information to be used by humans. This paper presents a new version of TMK which is less formal than the existing versions of the language. This semi-formal version of TMK is intended to be used as a software architecture modeling language for use by human software engineers.