Visual programming environment for hybrid expert systems

This paper proposes an architecture for hybrid expert system development which combines expert problem-solving functions and other conventional computational functions by visual programming technology. The visual programming technique is used both for task-specific knowledge representation and for procedural programming for connecting functional components. In knowledge representation, knowledge is visually represented in the form of decision tables and decision trees. In procedural visual programming, each functional object is displayed as a box-shaped icon with accessible ports which are connected by wires on the graphic editor. Based on the architecture, an expert system shell for the classification task, called HOLON/VP(DT), is incorporated in a visual programming system called HOLON/VP. This paper briefly describes the tool and its evaluation based on some application systems developed with the tool.