Object-oriented modelling of expert system reasoning process

The paper describes modelling and design of expert system reasoning process using object-oriented approach. Specifically, it shows one way of representing all of the important concepts, components and activities of an expert system reasoning process as classes, objects, and interactions among the objects. Existing approaches in this regard include using commercial integrated tools for building expert systems, application-specific modelling and developing supporting tools in-house, identifying the particular application as an instance of a certain generic task, using ontologies, etc. The essence of the approach proposed in this paper is an object-oriented model of reasoning process based on a hierarchy of reasoning agents. The model is supported by a number of design patterns that help develop a wide range of object-oriented reasoning mechanisms for practical applications. The approach was compared to the existing ones w.r.t. the features like efficiency, reusability, uniformity, simplicity, etc. Results of the comparison show that the approach is easy to use, produces unified reasoning mechanisms suited to each particular application, and significantly reduces design and implementation efforts and costs.