ABSTRACT
Knowledge acquisition, in particular, is one of the most difficult and error-prone tasks in building these types of systems. Knowledge acquisition involves identifying the relevant technical knowledge, recording it, and getting it into computable form so the problem-solving engine of the expert system can apply it. Knowledge acquisition is a form of requirements analysis, which plays a critical role in building quality software. Requirements analysis in general is the process of identifying a user’s needs and determining what to build in a system. It has been shown that defects injected into software during requirements analysis are costlier to correct than those injected during subsequent phases of the development life cycle. Research has also shown that many system failures can be attributed to the lack of clear and specific requirements analysis. The financial consequence of poor requirements analysis has long been understood. In fact, knowledge acquisition is the most difficult and expensive part of building and maintaining expert systems.
