Reasoning by analogy in knowledge base systems

A discussion is presented of the integration of analogical reasoning into a knowledge base system. Such a system would retrieve stored examples on the basis of similarity to a current problem. A data model that permits a case-oriented representation is developed. The cases are organized in memory using an indexing scheme that permits directed search. The search strategy is based on the goal of the problem. Incorporating this type of reasoning into a database will provide a powerful search strategy which does not require users to be familiar with the organization of the database