From external requirements to appropriate knowledge representations: a case study

Describes a knowledge engineering project in which external requirements, like the maintainability of the knowledge base, the flexibility of the interface and the completeness/correctness of the advice generated by the system, were found to be crucial for the development of efficient knowledge-based systems. As a result-quite in opposition to traditional approaches-the external requirements were considered the determining factor for the choice of a particular knowledge representation. It is discussed why rules, “repair plans” and model-based representations were not appropriate representations for building a system which at the same time was easily maintainable, supported flexible interaction, and generated complete and correct advice. It is then shown how the problem was solved by building a cooperative knowledge-based system which uses a relatively simple representational formalism