A multi-functional knowledge management system

We describe a general purpose knowledge management system, discussing its general goals and features, as well as its use in several very different applications. By "multi-functional", we mean having a wide variety of knowledge management functions such as debugging, formatting, and retrieval, and a wide variety of possible applications. The system, called CODE, functions primarily as a "knowledge engineer's rapid prototyper", or as a "spreadsheet for ideas"; one can experiment rapidly with relationships between concepts and obtain quick feedback on the desirability of changes and additions to a knowledge base. CODE's highly graphic interface permits experimentation with descriptions or definitions of concepts, which are arranged in an inheritance network using a very flexible inheritance mechanism. Several associated subsystems, such as a first order logic system and a simple natural language system, allow various types of syntactic and semantic checks to be performed if desired. We illustrate CODE's flexibility by describing three typical applications: in software engineering, terminology, and ontological design for knowledge-based systems.