AN EMPIRICAL-MODEL FOR THE EVALUATION AND SELECTION OF EXPERT-SYSTEM SHELLS

Expert systems (ES) represent a relatively new approach to solving com plex problems with computers. Since the early 1980s, the introduction of ES shells had been a major factor in making the ES technology an af fordable application of artificial intelligence for most organizations . Currently, there are more than one hundred commercial ES shells avai lable in the market. The selection of a specific ES shell for a specif ic application is an important decision. If the ''wrong'' ES shell is selected it could result in an inefficient, or ineffective, expert sys tem or even in project failure. The availability of a large number of rapidly evolving ES shells on the market and the lack of industry stan dards or benchmarks, along with the lack of user experience with this technology, make the comparison and selection of an appropriate shell a difficult task. In this paper we describe an ES shell evaluation mod el along with guidelines for the evaluation process. This model is bas ed on the experiences of 271 knowledge engineers and end-users. Given a particular application type, the model can be used to identify criti cal ES shell attributes and capabilities, which can then be used as ev aluation criteria against the pool of candidate ES shells.