Section: Software

CBR*Tools

Participants : Sergiu Chelcea, Mihai Jurca, Brigitte Trousse [ correspondant ] .

CBR*Tools is an object-oriented framework [70] , [66] for Case-Based Reasoning which is specified with the UMT notation (Rational Rose) and written in Java. It offers a set of abstract classes to models the main concepts necessary to develop applications integrating case-based reasoning techniques: case, case base, index, measurements of similarity, reasoning control. It also offers a set of concrete classes which implements many traditional methods (closest neighbors indexing, Kd-tree indexing  [85] , prototypes indexing  [69] , neuronal approach based indexing, standards similarities measurements). CBR*Tools currently contains more than 240 classes divided in two main categories: the core package for basic functionality and the time package for the specific management of the behavioral situations. The programming of a new application is done by specialization of existing classes, objects aggregation or by using the parameters of the existing classes.

CBR*Tools aims application fields where the re-use of cases indexed by behavioral situations is required. The CBR*Tools framework was evaluated via the design and the implementation of five applications (Broadway-Web, educaid, BeCKB, Broadway-Predict, CASA and RA2001 ). We showed that, for each application, the thorough expertise necessary to use CBR*Tools relates to only 20% to 40% of the hot spots thus validating the assistance brought by our platform on design as well as on the implementation, thanks to the re-use of its abstract architecture and its components (index, similarity).

CBR*Tools is concerned by our two current contracts: EPIA (cf. section  7.1.1 ) and MobiVip (cf. section  7.1.2 ).

CBR*Tools is planned to be available in 2006 for research, teaching and academic purpose under the INRIA license. The user manual can be downloaded at the URL: http://www-sop.inria.fr/axis/cbrtools/manual/ .