---

This file is part of Logtalk https://logtalk.org/ SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 1998-2023 Paulo Moura <pmoura@logtalk.org> SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Design pattern: Expert system

Description: Allow representation of specialized domain knowledge that can be used to solve problems in that domain. These problems are typically classification problems.

Related examples: The examples/birds example implements a bird identification expert system. The examples/lpa/faults implements an expert system for diagnosing automobile faults.

This design pattern is usually implemented using some representation of rules that express the domain knowledge and a meta-interpreter for those rules that allows asking (usually, interactively) questions about rule premisses. Answers to those questions are stored to avoid repeating the questions and an allow using the answers when attempting to apply other rules that share some of the premisses.