Advantages of meta-level control architectures in maintaining rule-based systems

The authors demonstrate the enhancement in maintainability made possible by introducing meta-level control architectures to production systems. They assess the amount of effort expended in upgrading a rule base through the range referred to by maintenance staff for rule base upgrading. The rule base of an intelligent CAI system currently in operation that employs the meta-level control architecture and an identical one without the architecture have been upgraded so that they satisfy the same upgraded specifications. The measured range confirms that the meta-level control architecture curtails the effort expended in upgrading the rule base by 19%. In particular, the effort expended in upgrading control flow is reduced by 41%.