JESS: A New Dawn Breaking in Software (Rules) Engineering ??

[Rich Halsey]

I am being advised that the dawn of a whole new era of software engineering is about to happen, i.e., legislation by the US Congress is now forcing US corporations to comply with new financial reporting standards and by extension it means that IT shops will now have to prove to Federal auditors that their applications are not "cooking the data" which could be used to "cook the books". I would take this to mean that Federal auditors can demand to be shown that the existing IT system code corresponds EXACTLY to the engineering documentation (if it even exists !!) and corporations that cannot produce proof of this will fall of a cloud of suspicion. This seems to be leading to the P.O.P. Syndrome (Probability of Prosecution) as witnessed by ENRON, WorldCom and others because the legislation directly targets the CEO and CFO of any publicly held US corporation.   So, how many IT shops can document how their (non-deterministic) rules systems actually work ?? Or, how many IT shops can do a "show and tell" on any of their systems to the satisfaction of Federal IT auditors ?? OBTW, all systems that have been off-shored now have the same requirements if the data ultimately feeds to the financial reporting systems - just how much does NOT ???? So, it seems that all off-shored work will now be under a glaring microscope just like the US work.   This all seems to imply that the days of "web speed" software development may be nearing an end, and the re-emergence of "acid tested" software is about to begin. Is the industry up to this - from what I have seen over the years, IT shops may need an "attitude adjustment" from the CEO/CFO levels.