Selecting the Capable Expert System Tool Using Advisory System

Expert systems are fast becoming the leading edge of artificial intelligence technology because of the need for such; systems in commercial and scientific enterprise and also because AI technology has evolved to the point where expert systems development has become well understood and feasible in many domains. This area of AI has concentrated on the construction of high-performance programs in specialized professional domains. Building a new expert system is a major investment. Choosing the right expert system building tool or shell is critical to the success and failure of such investment. The selection of a suitable tool requires consideration of a comprehensive set of factors and balancing of multiple objectives in determining the suitability of a particular tool for building a defined expert system application. Because of the complexity of the problem a number of tools must be deployed to arrive at the proper solution. A new decision making approach is presented in which Expert Systems, and Multi-Criteria Decision Making techniques are integrated systematically in solving expert system building tool selection problem. To implement the proposed decision-making approach, a prototype system was developed in which ES and Multi-Criteria Decision making methods were successfully integrated by using the Component object Model technology to achieve software interoperability among the systems components. A typical example is also presented to demonstrate the application of the prototype system. This approach integrates the capabilities of Expert Systems and Multi-Criteria Decision Making and provides an advisory system to assist the knowledge engineers and system developers during the tool selection procedure.