ISTAR — a tool for creative design of knowledge bases

Abstract

AbstractThis paper gives a comprehensive explanation of the Istar knowledge representation software tool. Not only does it describe the features and facilities found in Istar, but it discusses why they are as they are.Istar is one of a new generation of knowledge representation tools, aimed at ill‐structured domains of knowledge. While it can be used in traditional KBS projects, in which pieces of knowledge from a domain expert are assembled to form a working knowledge base, it is designed for situations in which there is a large element of creative design: knowledge refinement and generation resulting from the knowledge representation process.The knowledge representation ‘language’ is purely graphical; the knowledge engineer ‘draws’ knowledge on an easel as a box and arrows diagram. Behind this diagram is the knowledge base itself, in the form of integrated inference nets, Bayesian nets and semantic nets. This paper discusses the reasons for these design choices and, briefly, some of the issues faced in development of Istar.