Mechanisms for structuring knowledge-based systems

Abstract

In order to reduce the complexity of large knowledge-based systems and promote reusability, means for decomposing them to smaller chunks are required. MIKE, our knowledge engineering framework, provides three basic means for structuring which are described in this paper: different kinds of knowledge are separated at different knowledge layers, knowledge layers can be structured by modules, and knowledge within modules is expressed in terms of an object-centred data model. In addition, ideas from entity relationship model clustering are adapted and extended to facilitate the understandability of domain knowledge and support the formation of modules.