SmartBooks: a step beyond active-cookbooks to aid in framework instantiation

In this work we present SmartBooks, a new approach to support framework instantiation based on the active cookbook concept, extended with a combination of the concept of user-task modeling and least commitment planning methods. Based on this technique, a tool can present to the developer the different high level activities that can be carried on when creating a new application from a framework, taking as a basis the documentation provided by the designer through instantiation rules. For example, if the framework is in the accounting domain, some of the initial activities may be to create a new type of account, or to describe a new algorithm to calculate the tax rate. For each of these high level activities, there is a list of tasks that the user must carry out in order to complete the activity. When the user selects her next objective, the tool is able to build the sequence of tasks that have to be carried out to accomplish that objective; this list of tasks is called the instantiation plan, and the process of plan creation is named planning. In this paper we present the main characteristics of the planning approach and a example of the instantiation tool being developed.