Expert systems integrated with information systems

Amongst the users of the AIDA applications there is a rapidly growing interest in the use of expert systems, not as independent systems, but as logical extensions of their already existing information systems. In this paper a prototype system (IDEA) will be described that consists of a set of utilities for the construction of an expert system within the context of an AIDA application. Although IDEA does not excel in sophisticated knowledge representations nor in search strategies (the development of which was not our primary concern) it is able to demonstrate that the facilities provided by AIDA together with the IDEA facilities result in an expert system which is characterized by a high degree of integration with the already operational information system.