| A methodology is proposed which is used along with expert system shells or other system development front-ends to check rule-based systems for rule-base integrity. The incremental addition of rules into a rule-based system over time may introduce rule, rule-set, and database inconsistencies and incompleteness. A Rule Integrity Sub-System called RISS is proposed which checks the addition of new rules against the existing rule-base for conflict, redundancy, subsumption, knowledge-related limits, rule completeness, rule-set completeness and consistency, database-related consistency, and message consistency. The relational database is used to store the rules, and relational database techniques are used to analyze the rule-base for integrity. The directed graph is used to represent relationships within rules, between rules, and between database attributes and rules. Thus, both the relational database and directed graphs are the unifying methodologies in the design of the system. Also, a simple trace mechanism is provided to show the details of analysis in report form. |
