Odyssey: A knowledge-based assistant

摘要

We describe an investigation into the representation and use of task domain knowledge to assist with the acquisition of data in an office information system. In particular, a demonstration system called Odyssey is described which assists with the filling out of a collection of electronic forms in the preparation for a business trip. The system uses knowledge about trip planning to maintain consistency of the acquired data, infer additional values and data base records, reformat field entries on the forms, correct spelling errors, etc. We discuss the ‘frame oriented’ style of programming used to design and implement Odyssey that combines ‘frame-structured’ knowledge representation and ‘object oriented’ programming. We focus on the problems involved with allowing the user at any time to enter or change information in any of the forms. A dependency maintenance facility is described that deals with those problems by allowing the application of domain knowledge to data whenever it enters the data base, and the removal of derived results whenever the data used in the derivation is removed or changed.