This book is designed for persons who are interested in the development of knowledge systems. It is aimed particularly at MIS personnel, so the authors spend 4 of the book’s 14 chapters reviewing and explaining the project development life cycle. A companion set of disks, which presents a demonstration of an automobile repair knowledge system and runs on 640K RAM IBM PCs or compatibles with hard disk and color card, is available for purchase and use with the book.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part, which comprises only two chapters, presents a brief and concise overview of expert systems, including advantages and disadvantages of the various search strategies, as well as reasons for using shells. The greatest strength of the book lies in the second part. This part consists of seven chapters that detail techniques for acquiring knowledge from domain experts, representing and structuring the knowledge, and coding the knowledge. Other chapters in this section discuss critical issues in the selection of software and hardware and ergonomic concerns in software development to ensure a proper interface between systems and customers. The third part of the book discusses techniques and tools for systems management.

The book has six appendices. Appendix A is a source listing of the automobile repair system; Appendix B presents a list of information sources, such as names and addresses of organizations that support the advancement of artificial intelligence, and periodical titles with the addresses of their publishers. Appendix C is a list of recommended readings; it presents materials dating from 1953 through 1987 and includes some of the major materials in expert systems development. Appendix D presents a glossary of terms, Appendix E lists outlines of job descriptions for project development teams, and Appendix F is a questionnaire that the authors recommend for use at the project feasibility study stage.

The book is heavily illustrated with several examples, including the automobile repair system, a plant identification system, a phone service system, a loan applications system, and an employee evaluations system. It can serve as a useful supplementary text for a course in the analysis and design of expert systems because the language and illustrations are clear and the authors positively discuss the advantages and disadvantages of key expert systems development tools. It is unfortunate that they had to spend so much time on the systems development life cycle.