On the development of environments for developing expert systems

We address the problem of developing environments for developing expert systems. In doing this, we first examine the state-of-the-art of the work in expert system development environments (ESDE´s), which generally can be viewed as a set of computerized tools that co-operate among each other to support the process of developing expert systems, and discuss it in relation to the traditional software development environment. Possible problems and approaches to development of ESDE´s are also discussed. In particular, we also describe some of experiences in designing an ESDE for the purpose of supporting the application of an expert system development methodology for creating a knowledge specification using J. F. Sowa´s (1984) conceptual structures