Metatool support for custom-tailored, domain-oriented knowledge acquisition

Metatool support for knowledge acquisition is an approach to automate the implementation of domain-specific knowledge-acquisition tools. Dots is a metatool that can be used by developers to generate domain-specific knowledge-acquisition tools. Whenever a domain model useful for expressing the relevant expertise can be established, developers can use Dots to specify and generate a knowledge-acquisition environment for development of expert systems. Dots assumes that the knowledge-acquisition tools generated are based on the knowledge-elicitation technique of graphical knowledge editing. A salient aspect of Dots is that no particular domain, task or problem-solving method is presupposed by the metatool. We achieve this generalization by introducing an abstract-architecture view—that is, an architectural model of the target knowledge-acquisition tool—as the framework for specifying target knowledge-acquisition tools. Dots provides facilities for editing this abstract architecture and for instantiating knowledge-acquisition tools from it.