Research on Software Architecture for Expert System in Practice

Advanced applications in fields such as expert system, real-time process control, problem solving, machine learning require the construction, efficient access and management of large, shared knowledge bases. Such knowledge bases cannot be built using existed tools such as expert system shells, because these do not scale up, nor can be built in terms of existing database technology, because such technology does not support the rich representational structure and inference mechanisms required for knowledge-based systems. This paper proposes a generic architecture for a knowledge base management system intended for such applications. The software architecture assumes quotient space structure which analyses identic problem in different granularity space. A new software architecture model for knowledge base system based on quotient space is given. The atomic component, quotient component, connector and configuration are defined. As an example, a knowledge base system framework for agro-meteorology is described. Some components and a configuration about agro-meteorology are given. All above work sets up basic theory of software architecture for knowledge base system based on quotient space and provides new way for further research.