A TOOL FOR TASK-BASED KNOWLEDGE AND SPECIFICATION ACQUISITION

Knowledge acquisition has been identified as the bottleneck for knowle dge engineering. One of the reasons is the lack of an integrated metho dology that is able to provide tools and guidelines for the elicitatio n of knowledge as well as the verification and validation of the syste m developed. Even though methods that address this issue have been pro posed, they only loosely relate knowledge acquisition to the remaining part of the software development fife cycle. To alleviate this proble m, we have developed a framework in which knowledge acquisition is int egrated with system specifications to facilitate the verification, val idation, and testing of the prototypes as well as the final implementa tion. To support the framework, we have developed a knowledge acquisit ion tool, TAME. It provides an integrated environment to acquire and g enerate specifications about the functionality and behavior of the tar get system, and the representation of the domain knowledge and domain heuristics. The tool and the framework, together, can thus enhance the verification, validation, and the maintenance of expert systems throu gh their life cycles. (C) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.