Domain Analysis and Description Principles, Techniques, and Modelling Languages

We present a method for analysing and describing domains. By a domain we shall understand a rationally describable segment of a human assisted reality, i.e., of the world, its physical parts: natural [“God-given”] and artifactual [“human-made”], and living species: plants and animals including, notably, humans. These are endurants (“still”), as well as perdurants (“alive”). Emphasis is placed on “human-assistedness,” that is, that there is at least one (human-made) artifact and, therefore, that humans are a primary cause for change of endurant states as well as perdurant behaviours. By a method we shall mean a set of principles of analysis and for selecting and applying a number of techniques and tools in the construction of some artifact, say a domain description. We shall present a method for constructing domain descriptions. Among the tools we shall only be concerned with are the analysis and synthesis languages. Domain science and engineering marks a new area of computing science. Just as we are formalising the syntax and semantics of programming languages, so we are formalising the syntax and semantics of human-assisted domains. Just as physicists are studying the natural physical world, endowing it with mathematical models, so we, computing scientists, are studying these domains, endowing them with mathematical models, A difference between the endeavours of physicists and ours lies in the tools: The physics models are based on classical mathematics, differential equations and integrals, and so on; our models are based on mathematical logic, set theory, and algebra [1]. Where physicists thus classically use a variety of differential and integral calculi to model the physical world, we shall be using the analysis and description calculi presented in this article to model primarily artifactual domains.