ABSTRACT
The enterprise of artificial intelligence (AI) has given rise to a new class of software systems. These software systems, commonly called expert systems, or knowledge-based systems, are distinguished in that they contain, and can apply, knowledge or some particular skill or expertise in the execution of a task. These systems embody, in some form, humanlike expertise. The construction of such software therefore requires that we somehow get hold of the knowledge and transfer it into the computer, representing it in a form usable by the machine. This total process has come to be called knowledge acquisition (KA). The necessity for knowledge representation (KR)—the describing or writing down of the knowledge in machine-usable form—underlies and shapes the whole KA process and the development of expert system software.
