The challenge of maintenance-results from an empirical study about knowledge based systems

The technology of knowledge-based systems and expert systems, respectively, can already look back upon a fairly long “tradition”. However, as far as the practical implementations of knowledge-based systems in companies are concerned, it has only been a few years since a certain increase in use has become noticeable. So naturally the publications on this theme have been primarily concerned with the development and the implementation of such systems, but only little attention has been given to the aspects of maintenance and serviceability. The objective of this study is to analyze the maintenance situation of knowledge-based systems (expert systems) that are currently being used in practice, thus identifying characteristics and shortcomings of today´s maintenance practice and relating them to the maintenance of conventional software. A particular emphasis lies on the collection of empirical data