History of ASE/KBSE/KBSA

In 1983, Rome Air Development Center (now Rome Laboratory) published a report calling for the development of a Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Assistant (KBSA) which would employ artificial intelligence techniques to support all phases of the software development process (this report appears in "Readings in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering", Morgan Kaufman, 1986). This report led to a series of funding initiatives completed by an annual meeting of funders, researchers, and other interested parties; this meeting then evolved into the KBSA conferences. In 1990, under the informal leadership of Lou Hoebel, the conference (KBSA-5) really came together with a great mix of research papers, panels, and demonstrations, in the first truly open version of the conference. It was the success of KBSA-5 that prompted its evolution to KBSE.

In 1991, the conference was named the Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Conference, KBSE-6, and was held in Syracuse with cooperation from ACM and AAAI. Additionally, the proceedings of KBSE-6 will be available in early 1992 from IEEE press. The expanded program and improved review process made KBSE-6 a resounding success, and KBSE-7, held in Tysons Corner, Virginia, followed suit with support from AAAI, ACM SIGART and SIGSOFT, and the IEEE Computer Society. The proceedings of KBSE-7 were published by IEEE CS Press. KBSE-8, held in 1993 in Chicago, Illinois, was a similar success hosted by Andersen Consulting.

After KBSE-11 in 1996, the decision was made to change the name of the conference the Automated Software Engineering Conference. It was felt that this name better captured how the focus of the conference had expanded with growth and was consistent with the affiliated Journal of Automated Software Engineering.