Ontological analysis: an ongoing experiment

✍ Scribed by James H. Alexander; Michael J. Freiling; Sheryl J. Shulman; Steven Rehfuss; Steven L. Messick

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1987
• Weight: 750 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7373
• DOI: 10.1016/s0020-7373(87)80082-2

✦ Synopsis

Knowledge engineering is a complex activity which permeated with problems inherent in the difficulties of choosing the correct abstractions. Knowledge-level analysis has been suggested as a technique to help manage this complexity. We have previously presented a methodology, called ontological analysis, which provides a technique for performing knowledge-level analysis of a problem space. This paper presents the experiences we• have gained with knowledge-level analysis. Our experiences are reported and the criteria for a formal knowledge-level analysis language are discussed.

1. Knowledge-level analysis

We have found that neophyte knowledge engineers often "don't know where to start". This roadblock is not usually the result of a lack of understanding about expert systems or representation schemes; but is due to confusion about the appropriate classification of the individual knowledge elements of a domain.

Currently, a knowledge engineer must rely on an intuitive, informal approach to collecting and organizing expert knowledge for a knowledge-based system. Newell (1982) proposed that there should be a knowledge-level analysis to guide the development of AI systems, such as expert systems. Recently (