Rule-base content verification using a digraph-based modelling approach

Ensuring that the content of a rule-base, which is being encoded, is free f rom problems of consistency, completeness, and conciseness, is necessary to avoid any performance errors that might occur during consultation sessions with the rule-based system. In this paper we have described, formally, con tent verification of a specific type of rule-base using a digraph-based mod elling approach. Through analytic formulations it is demonstrated that prob lems in the rule-base lead to the existence of certain properties in the di graph and various rule-base model representations that have been devised in this work. These properties, in turn, as is also shown through an example, can be examined for rule-base content verification. (C) 1999 Elsevier Scie nce Ltd. All rights reserved.