An integrated approach to heterogeneous expert systems

An approach to the integration of heterogeneous expert systems (ESs) is presented. This approach allows independent ESs to exchange their knowledge in the rule level rather than in the system level. The Functional Diagram is developed to capture knowledge in ESs in terms of derivation relationships and restrictive dependencies among entities. Another essential system component of our approach is a powerful global knowledge manipulation language with high-level semantics, which allows the user to formulate highly-sophisticated inquiries. The associated global query processing mechanism allows independent ESs to function as parts of one system in deriving the best global answer despite the incompatibilities in their inferencing mechanisms and interpretation schemes. One advantage of this approach is that rules and constraints can in effect be shared among heterogeneous ESs.