Reference: Fensel, D.; Eriksson, H.; Musen, M. A.; & Studer, R. Conceptual and Formal Specifications of Reusable Problem-Solving Methods: A Case Study. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Medical Computer Science, February, 1996.
Abstract: The identification of reusable problem-solving methods can improve knowledge engineering by allowing developers to design reasoners quickly from preexisting components. An important factor for successful method reuse is the specification of preexisting methods. The PROTEGE-II approach allows developers to select methods from a library, and to map methods to a domain ontology. KARL is a formal and executable knowledge-specification language that provides modeling primitives for expressing problem-solving methods. In this paper, we show how the code and informal descriptions of problem-solving methods in PROTEGE-II can be supplemented with the formal method definitions in KARL. For our case study, we have chosen two methods from the PROTEGE-II framework: chronological backtracking and its task specific refinement: the board-game method. Therefore, we give insights in the development of task-specific (i.e., strong) problem-solving methods starting with general-purpose methods. We also show how such a task-specific method can be adapted to a given domain.