The construction of knowledge-based systems is extremely labor-intensive. Unfortunately, current tools for building knowledge-based systems do not allow developers to take significant advantage of previous knowledge bases when building new systems. The research supported by this award involves design of a novel architecture for the construction of knowledge-based systems. The architecture allows system builders either to select an existing problem-solving method from a library, or to construct a new problem-solving method from a set of predefined building blocks. The developer then maps the data requirements of the problem-solving method to elements of reusable domain ontologies that define models of particular application areas. Both the domain ontologies and the problem-solving methods that are used to build knowledge-based systems are stored in libraries that future developers can access when implementing new applications. The research thus addresses strategies to index and retrieve problem-solving methods and domain ontologies, and to integrate these components within new problem-solving frameworks. The research will allow construction of new classes of tools for building knowledge-based systems, and will define an infrastructure that supports the reuse of knowledge-base components at increasingly high levels of abstraction. //
