The engineering of expert systems testing process

Every expert system must continuously evolve, or it will become obsolete. This paper explores a successive testing process for evolutionary expert systems. The proposed test process is based upon applying software engineering model for overall life cycle of test process. The proposed testing process has two major complementary components: testing and maintenance. Each plays an important role in ensuring the quality of the developed expert systems. The characteristics of each phase are described in terms of testing capability and goals. The present work reports an accumulated experience gained through many years of an iterative process of developing, evaluating, deploying, and updating several expert system using CommonKADS knowledge engineering methodology at the agricultural domain at the Central Laboratory for Agricultural Expert systems (CLAES), Egypt.