DEDAL's Language
DEDAL's language, based on protocol analysis of design activities, is
used to specify the different aspects of a artifact and is used in
both the index and query representations together with the concepts
from the design artifact. The language defines:
- Topic
Categories that describe different aspects of a design such as design
requirements, structure, behavior, choices in the design history etc.
- Level of Detail
Global views or detailed descriptions of a specific part.
- Medium
Different media such as text, graphics, tables, video, audio etc.
- Subject
A part or concept in the device model pertaining to which relevant
documents will be retrieved.
The above vocabulary is used to describe segments of the documentation
and to formulate questions to the system.
For instance: "the solenoid induces a magnetic field generating a
force which pushes the lever..." can be described by the
following indexes:
-
topic: operation, subject: force-generation-mechanism
level-of-detail: conceptual, medium: text
-
topic: dependency, subject: magnetic field of solenoid
level-of-detail: conceptual, medium: text
while the query "where is the solenoid?" can be formulated as:
-
topic: location, subject: solenoid
medium: schema
