Knowledge-based diagnostic systems in the Internet

The Internet offers the possibility to get access to distributed information. We present a diagnostic expert system shell kit D3 in which an http-server was integrated to allow one to run a full diagnostic process via a normal web browser. This way, it is also possible to serve an arbitrary number of different users with the same knowledge base. Further more, the web technology was used to implement an information system in the diagnostic system to add hypermedia information of any kind to the knowledge base objects. If the user knows how to use a web browser he can work with the whole system. Therefore this unified interface is very helpful to increase the acceptance of such a complex system as a diagnosis and information system. The approach is used with an example in the domain of printing machine diagnosis.