A KNOWLEDGE-BASED CONFIGURATOR THAT SUPPORTS SALES, ENGINEERING, AND MANUFACTURING AT AT-AND-T NETWORK SYSTEMS

PROSE is a knowledge-based configurator platform for telecommunication s products. Its outstanding feature is a product knowledge base writte n in C-CLASSIC, a frame-based knowledge representation system in the K L-ONE family of languages. It is one of the first successful products using a KL-ONE-style language. Unlike previous configurator applicatio ns, the PROSE knowledge base is in a purely declarative form that prov ides developers with the ability to add knowledge quickly and consiste ntly. The PROSE architecture is general and is not tied to any specifi c telecommunications product. As such, it is being reused to develop c onfigurators for several different products. Finally, PROSE not only g enerates configurations from just a few high-level parameters, but it can also verify configurations produced manually by customers, enginee rs, or salespeople. The same product knowledge, encoded in C-CLASSIC, supports both the generation and the verification of product configura tions.