: CUSTOM SOFTWARE : TYPES OF SOFTWARE : EXPERT SYSTEMS
CUSTOM EXPERT SYSTEM SOFTWARE
An expert system is software that attempts to reproduce the performance of one
or more human experts, most commonly in a specific problem domain, and is a
traditional application and/or subfield of artificial intelligence. A wide
variety of methods can be used to simulate the performance of the expert however
common to most or all are
1) the creation of a so-called "knowledgebase" which
uses some knowledge representation formalism to capture the Subject Matter
Experts (SME) knowledge and
2) a process of gathering that knowledge from the
SME and codifying it according to the formalism, which is called knowledge
engineering.
Expert systems may or may not have learning components but a third
common element is that once the system is developed it is proven by being placed
in the same real world problem solving situation as the human SME, typically as
an aid to human workers or a supplement to some information system