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Integration of expert systems in advanced fourth generation languages
Author(s) -
Kirby Jeremy,
Meiβner Klaus
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
expert systems
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.365
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1468-0394
pISSN - 0266-4720
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0394.1991.tb00372.x
Subject(s) - computer science , expert system , knowledge base , prolog , shell (structure) , software engineering , oracle , user interface , frame (networking) , knowledge representation and reasoning , subject matter expert , database , programming language , artificial intelligence , telecommunications , materials science , composite material
This article describes the integration of an expert system shell (AllRound Expert System, AR/XPS) with a Unix‐based 4GL application generator (Task Flow Management, TFM). TFM supports the client‐server architecture of distributed applications and provides access to several relational databases, including Informix and Oracle. A short overview of the major features of TFM is given, with special regard to characteristics relevant for the integration of an expert system. The main focus lies in the architecture of AR/XPS, which contains rule‐based and frame‐based knowledge representation methods and which was implemented in Prolog; the user interface is totally unified with that of TFM, so that the user sees only one system and need not be aware that an expert system is present. AR/XPS has access to all features of TFM and to any databases present, so that an expert system can take decisions according to the current status of the database. At the end of this article a description of the Knowledge Base Creator is given and some remarks are made regarding our experience with pilot applications.