Towards knowledge-based infolog specifications A case study of information engineering

A radically new approach to computing, the so-called knowledge-based information processing is achieving striking success in supporting activities needing logical power, human judgement, reasoning and expertise. It offers universal applicability for problem-solving, in particular in more complex tasks than those presently handled by computer systems. The current state of the art and future prospects for the development of a computer system which either performs expert tasks automatically or is used interactively by experts to increase their productivity are reviewed. The weak points we need to look at, namely the lack of guidelines for building such systems, and some dead ends are indicated. Some new results are expected by applying this key technology to our case study, the construction of a Systems Specification Support System (S4). Its knowledge base written in PROLOG captures and encodes human expertise about the INFOLOG model and INFOLOG specifications, which is made available via consultation to formulate specifications and, possibly, advice. The architecture of the knowledge base is presented by discussing its abstraction levels. This investigation provides also a methodology in structuring a systems analyst's knowledge about an application. This means how to find out the main kinds of objects, including their relationships, in some problem domain.