Knowledge Based Systems Methods: A Practitioners Guide

The primary audience for this text is that large group of individuals in IT departments now contemplating the prospect of developing KBS within their own organisations. The aim of the book is to provide a framework for understanding how KBS technology can be used to increase the range of Information Systems currently being developed and to describe a set of the main KBS methods currently available in sufficient detail for readers to understand the essentials of these methods. This is done by providing a conceptual framework to show how the various elements of KBS fit into the development of 'conventional' software systems. The relationship between conventional and knowledge based systems and the need to integrate the two permeates the whole book. Practical advice is also given on how methods integration can be achieved. This book describes the most important methods used commercially to build knowledge based systems, and readers will be able to start building KBS in a structured way in a commercial environment. It takes the highest profile in academic methods and describes them in a way acceptable to commercial systems developers, and takes a unified view of conventional IT and KBS through the presentation of an academically sound model.