Concurrent object-oriented diagnostic system

The author describes a diagnostic expert-system shell called CCC, which is based on concurrent object-oriented framework. Since CCC uses high-level, declarative, and structured knowledge representation specialized for diagnosis, the domain experts can easily encode their knowledge by themselves (i.e. without knowledge engineers). The diagnostic knowledge consists of fault classification knowledge, causal knowledge, and check knowledge. The process of diagnosis is divided into two phases, fault classification and causal diagnosis. A novel kind of user interface has been developed to make good use of the inference mechanism. The interface permits the user to semivoluntarily input symptoms in a lumped manner, reducing the user´s burden and the time required for diagnosis as a whole