In this paper we discuss the application of expert system
technology in the analytical chemistry domain and
summarizes the progress made in the implementation of the ACexpert
project. We start with a brief
description of the software tools that are commonly used in
construction of expert system applications as
well as the inference mechanisms employed to search the knowledge base.
A brief review of the achievements
made world wide during the past five years in the development of expert
systems for use in the chemistry
domain follows. This paper particularly addresses the difficulties
found in the knowledge acquisition process.
An effective knowledge encoding scheme, named the knowledge domain
matrix process (KDM), that has
been developed in our laboratory as an knowledge encoding alternative,
is described. In the final section,
we describe the development of several stand-alone expert system
modules based on implementation of the
KDM scheme within the framework of the ACexpert project. The
importance of the user interface in an
expert system program is also emphasized, and graphical user interfaces
featuring icons, pull-down menus,
and graphical descriptions have been developed for the different
modules in the ACexpert project to ensure
a user-friendly and self-explanatory environment.