Knowledge structures for communications networks design and sales

The authors present the architectural principles and generic concepts that they have identified in their chosen sales domain and subsequently modeled in the expert network selector (ENS), ENS is a knowledge-based tool that is currently being developed to assist Bell Canada networks-sales agents, who may not possess some of the in-depth technical knowledge required to operate conventional design tools, in their daily operations. It uses a multiparadigm knowledge representation scheme to translate a customer´s communications and networking requirements into fully-configured solutions. ENS is implemented in Prolog and combines frames and rules.<>