Knowledge reuse through the application of the object knowledge canonical form

The importance of software reuse has been widely recognized. The use of a canonical form to translate knowledge among expert system building tools (ESBTs) has been demonstrated effective. An object knowledge canonical form (OKCF) is proposed to represent and translate object knowledge in object oriented ESBTs: CLIPS 5.0, KAPPA, and KEE. OKCF and Knowledge Interchange Format are different in features, such as translation schemes, commitment to commercial ESBTs, support of object oriented paradigm and uncertainty management, etc. OKCF has three major uses. First, the OKCF can be used as a reference for the development of new object oriented ESBTs. Second, the OKCF can be used to translate object knowledge among object oriented ESBTs; the translation through the OKCF greatly reduces the amount of translators. Third, the OKCF translators can be integrated with Knowledge Acquisition System Environment (KASE) to support expert system development.