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Beyond Knowledge Engineering

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Abstract

Knowledge engineering stems from E. A. Figenbaum’s proposal in 1977, but it will enter a new decade with the new challenges. This paper first summarizes three knowledge engineering experiments we have undertaken to show possibility of separating knowledge development from intelligent software development. We call it the ICAX mode of intelligent application software generation. The key of this mode is to generate knowledge base, which is the source of intelligence of ICAX software, independently and parallel to intelligent software development. That gives birth to a new and more general concept “knowware”. Knowware is a commercialized knowledge module with documentation and intellectual property, which is computer operable, but free of any built-in control mechanism, meeting some industrial standards and embeddable in software/hardware. The process of development, application and management of knowware is called knowware engineering. Two different knowware life cycle models are discussed: the furnace model and the crystallization model. Knowledge middleware is a class of software functioning in all aspects of knowware life cycle models. Finally, this paper also presents some examples of building knowware in the domain of information system engineering.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Academy of Mathematics and System Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100080, P.R. China

    Ru-Qian Lu & Zhi Jin

  2. Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100080, P.R. China

    Ru-Qian Lu & Zhi Jin

  3. Shanghai Key Lab of Intelligent Information Processing, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, P.R. China

    Ru-Qian Lu

  4. Beijing Key Lab of Multimedia and Intelligent Software, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100083, P.R. China

    Ru-Qian Lu

Authors
  1. Ru-Qian Lu
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  2. Zhi Jin
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Correspondence to Ru-Qian Lu.

Additional information

Regular Paper: Partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 69733020, 69983010, 60233010 and 60496324), the National Grand Fundamental Research 973 Program of China (Grant No. 2002CB312004), the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and MADIS of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ru-Qian Lu is a professor of computer science of the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica. His research interests include artificial intelligence, knowledge engineering and knowledge based software engineering. He has won two first class awards form the Academia Sinica and a National second class prize from the Ministry of Science and Technology. He has also won the sixth Huo Lookeng Prize for Mathematics.

Zhi Jin was awarded a B.S. degree in computer science from Zhangjiang University in 1984, and studied for her M.S. degree in computer science (expert system) and her Ph.D. degree in computer science (artificial intelligence) at Changsha Institute of Technology. She was awarded the Ph.D. degree in 1992. She is a senior member of China Computer Federation. Her research interests include knowledge-based systems, artificial intelligence, requirements engineering, ontology engineering, etc. Her current research focuses on ontology-based requirements elicitation and analysis. She has got about 80 publications, including co-authoring one book.

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Lu, RQ., Jin, Z. Beyond Knowledge Engineering. J Comput Sci Technol 21, 790–799 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-006-0790-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-006-0790-5

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