Expert Systems Development Through Software Product Lines Techniques

Expert system has the least focus on requirement engineering. In facts, requirement engineering is important to get all the requirements needed for an expert system. If the requirements do not meet the clients' needs, the expert system is considered fail although it works perfectly. Currently, there are a lot of studies proposing and describing the development of expert systems. However, they are focusing in a specific and narrow domain of problems. Also, the major concern of most researchers is the design issues of the expert system. Therefore, we emphasize on the very first step of success expert system development - requirement engineering. Hence, we are focusing in the requirement engineering techniques in order to present the most practical way to facilitate requirement engineering processes. In this paper, we analyze expert system attributes, requirement engineering processes in expert system developments and the possible techniques that can be applied to expert system developments. Next, we propose the most appropriate techniques for the expert system developments based on the analysis. From this paper, a set of techniques for expert system development will be provided.

Software product family or line is a software engineering paradigm that systematizes reuse. In software product line engineering, two phases are distinguished: domain engineering which is in charge of developing a common infrastructure and assets and application engineering which makes use of those assets to generate the products. One of the key aspects of product lines is variability and its management. However, the main focus has been on functional variability and quality variability in software product lines has not received so much attention by researchers. In a product line different members of the line may require different levels of a quality requirement, for instance they could differ in terms of their availability, security, reliability, etc. Due to this variability, quality evaluation in software product lines is much more complicated that in single-systems. One alternative is to evaluate all the products of a line but it is very expensive and ways of reducing evaluation efforts are necessary. In this direction, the paper presents a method for facilitating cost-effective quality evaluation of a product line taking into consideration variability on quality attributes.

The requirements for corrosion expert systems have never been clearly stated, though many expert system developers must have had a “typical” user in mind, when designing their application. Reviewing some of the developed systems has shown that there exist quite some different approaches. In this paper, some general guidelines will be presented which pertain both to the development of expert systems in general, as well as to the development of expert systems for corrosion, in particular. Most of these guidelines stem from experience with the development of a large-scale expert system for materials selection and corrosion analysis, PRIME. The following topics will be discussed: concepts that affect design and construction, architectural issues, the selection of requisite expert system components in conjunction with user requirements, design issues affected by task type and organizational constraints.

Legal liabilities pertaining to the identification and selection of domain experts is an issue that could adversely impact expert systems developers. Problems pertaining to flawed knowledge, improperly defined expertise, and behavioural and psychological impediments are just some of the issues. This paper examines the torts of strict products liability and negligence that system developers could incur as a result of expert-related difficulties. Parallels from legal scholars and federal and state court decisions are discussed relevant to expert system projects and developers. The paper concludes with a presentation of steps that systems developers can take to minimize potential legal liability.

Ameliorating the Pregnant Man problem: a verification tool for personal computer based expert systems

An optimized design of a matrix treatment involves fluid selection and acidizing simulations to predict the outcome of the treatment; Many matrix acidizing treatment designs and fluid selections have been successfully accomplished by utilizing expert system technology. However, none of these present a complete and optimized result (i.e., by utilizing the output of the expert system to predict the acidizing outcome using an acidizing numerical simulator). In the meantime, several acidizing computer simulation studies have been conducted separately. This paper presents a study which integrates the treatment design, particularly the fluid selection process, and acidizing simulation for sandstone formations. Required parameters for sandstone acidizing such as acid type, concentration, volume, and injection rate/pressure are first selected using an expert system. The output from the expert system is further used for the input to an acidizing numerical simulator (UTACID). A new sandstone acidizing reaction model, appropriate for a high-temperature environment, and anisotropic medium have been implemented into UTACID to enhance the performance of the simulator. The expert system and the simulator have been integrated to provide an optimization tool for sandstone acidizing treatment design and simulation.

This paper considers the possible enhancement of the capabilities of an expert system tool. Most of the commercial tools currently available are not particularly suitable for developing expert systems that involve routine design calculations. To overcome this drawback for engineering applications, numerical computations may be carried out by conventional computer programs which can be linked to an expert system tool through its external program interface. This type of expert systems is called a "hybrid" or "coupled" expert system. Practicing engineers will, sooner or later, face the need to use hybrid expert systems. This paper presents a case study which shows how the capabilities of a commercial expert system tool can be enhanced by integrating it with a conventional computer program. The hybrid expert system developed by the authors for illustration purpose can be used for the analysis of plane steel trusses and the evaluation of member design forces. It utilizes an in-house program called “Manager” to integrate two commercial software packages: an expert system tool called KES and a structural analysis package named PFRAME. The capabilities of the hybrid system appear to exceed those of the individual software packages. Key words: knowledge based expert systems, expert system building tools, hybrid expert systems, structural analysis, structural design.

The application of an expert system (expert system) which is very useful for the wider community is certainly very much needed by society today. Apart from that, this development also supports various human activities. Expert systems are also able to make recommendations for a series of user actions. The aim of this research is to determine the development of expert systems in management information systems. The research method used in this research is a descriptive research method with theoretical studies, namely a method that discusses several possibilities for solving actual problems by collecting data, compiling or classifying them, analyzing and interpreting them with existing theories and comparing them from literature sources. The research results show the development of expert systems in management information systems, namely knowledge bases, inference engines, and user interfaces. It can be concluded that expert systems help work and technological progress more quickly and the decision-making process is based on existing information and facts. Expert systems have also been used in various fields, from medical, legal, to financial. In developing an expert system, it is necessary to increase the level of knowledge related to the latest technology and information. So you can utilize modern technology to complete work more effectively and efficiently.

Depending on the specific expert system application, individuals and organizations involved in the expert system development and marketing chain may unwittingly surrender themselves to high-risk exposure to tort liability legal actions, in the event that an innocent third party should suffer physical harm. The degree of risk turns on whether the expert system is viewed by the court as a 'product' or as a 'service'. The author examines the implication of this determination in two areas of tort, product liability and negligence, and then outlines the issues surrounding the 'product-service continuum' as applied specifically to the expert system development and marketing environment. Finally, the author presents proactive measures that expert system developers and vendors should consider in order to minimize exposure to risk.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

This article discusses the selection of the domain for a knowledge-based expert system for a corporate application. The selection of the domain is a critical task in an expert system development. At the start of a project looking into the development of an expert system, the knowledge engineering project team must investigate one or several possible expert system domains. They must decide whether the selected application(s) are best suited to solution by present expert system technology, or if there might be a better way (or, possibly, no way) to attack the problems. If there are several possibilities, the team must also rank the potential applications and select the best available. To evaluate the potential of possible application domains, it has proved very useful to have a set of desired attributes for good expert domain. This article presents such a set of attributes. The attribute set was developed as part of a major expert system development project at GTE Laboratories. It was used recurrently (and modified and expanded continually) throughout an extensive application domain evaluation and selection process.

Expert system is made to transfer the expert knowledge into the system, so it hopefully can give solution to problem.“Expert system for diagnosis of infection TBC lung disease” is an alternative for the various expert system that can be used to overcome the problem. The aim of designing expert system is for diagnosis of infection TBC lung disease, should that users can diagnose towards this illnes based on symptoms put into this system. Development of expert system uses knowledge base stored in database using Paradox, rule based with forward chaining method.The result of consultation with the system indicate that this system can determine disease and suggestion based on symptoms inputed by user. Keyword : Expert System, Forward Chaining, Knowledge Base

A software product line (SPL) usually involves a shared set of core assets and a series of application products. To ensure consistency, the evolution of the core assets and all the application products should be coordinated and synchronized under a unified evolution process. Therefore, SPL evolution often involves cross-product propagation and synchronization besides application derivation based on core assets, presenting quite different characteristic from the evolution of individual software products. As software architectures, including the product line architecture (PLA) and application architectures, play a central role in SPL engineering and evolution, architecture-based evolution analysis is a natural way for analyzing and managing SPL evolution. In this paper, we explore common practices of architecture evolution and the rationale behind in industrial SPL development. To this end, we conduct a case study with Wingsoft examination system product line (WES-PL), an industrial product line with an evolution history of eight years and more than 10 application products. In the case study, we reviewed the evolution history of WES-PL architecture and analyzed several typical evolution cases. Based on the historical analysis, we identify some special problems in industrial SPL practice from the aspect of architecture evolution and summarize some useful experiences about SPL evolution decisions to complement classical SPL methodology. On the other hand, we also propose some possible improvements for the evolution management in WES-PL.

Software product line (SPL) is a software engineering paradigm for software development. A software product within a product line often has specific functionalities that are not common to all other products within the product line. Those specific functionalities are termed “variant features” in a product line. SPL paradigm involves the modeling of variant features. However, little work in SPL investigates and addresses the modeling of variant features specific to user interface (UI). Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto modeling language for object-oriented software systems. It is known that UML needs better support in modeling UIs. Thus, much research developed UML extensions to improve UML support in modeling UIs. Yet little of this work is related to developing such extensions for modeling UIs for SPLs in which variant features specific to UI modeling must be addressed. This research develops a UML extension -Web User Interface Modeling Language (WUIML) to address these problems. WUIML defines elements for modeling variant features specific to user interfaces for Web-based SPLs. The model elements in WUIML extend from the metaclass and BasicActivity of the UML2.0 metamodel. WUIML integrates the modeling of variant features specific to user interfaces to UML. For example, in a Web-based patient registration software product line, member products targeting British users may use British date format in the user interface, while member products targeting United States users may use United States date format in the user interface. Thus, this is a variant feature for this product line. WUIML defines a model element, XOR, to represent such exclusive or conditions in a product line user interface model. WUIML would reduce SPL engineers’ efforts needed in UI development. To validate the WUIML research outcome, a case study was conducted. The results of this empirical study indicate that modeling UIs for Web-based SPLs using WUIML is more effective and efficient than using standard UML.

Modern technological trends like Internet of Things (IoT’s) essentially require prompt development of software systems. To manage this, Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is frequently applied for development of different systems like industry automation, medical, surveillance, tracking and security etc. Image processing is an integral part of such systems. Particularly, image enhancement and classification operations are mandatory in order to effectively recognize objects for different purposes. Currently, such critical image processing operations are not managed through MDA and low level implementations are performed distinctly during system development. This severely delays the system development due to integration issues. Furthermore, system testing becomes problematic as few components of systems are developed through MDA and image processing operations are implemented in isolation. This article introduces a novel framework i.e. MIEORF – Model-driven Image Enhancement and Object Recognition Framework. Particularly, a meta-model is proposed, that allows modeling and visualization of complex image processing and object recognition tasks. Subsequently, an open source customized tree editor (developed using Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF)) and graphical modeling tool/workbench (developed using Sirius) have been developed (both distributable via eclipse plugin). Consequently, the proposed framework allows modeling and graphical visualization of major image processing operations. Moreover, it provides strong grounds for model transformation operations e.g. Model to Text Transformations (M2T) using Acceleo for generating executable Matlab code. Furthermore, it systematically combines MDA and image processing concepts which are detailed enough to be easily integrated into wide variety of systems such as industrial automation, medical, surveillance, security and biometrics etc. The feasibility of proposed framework is demonstrated via real world medical imagery case study. The results prove that the proposed framework provides a complete solution for modeling and visualization of image processing tasks and highly effective for MDA based systems development.

This paper introduces an expert system which demonstrates a new method for accurate estimation of building house cost. This system is simple and decreases the time, the effort, and the money of its beneficiaries. In addition, design and implementation of the proposed expert system are introduced. CLIPS 6.0 and C# are used in implementation phase. Also, this expert system is programmed to be in a standalone package with a platform independency. Furthermore, the developed expert system is tested under several real cases. Finally, an initial evaluation of this expert system is carried out and a positive feedback is received from user’s samples, which makes it robust and efficient.