Disk No  #761
Program Title: The IMP Shell
PC-SIG version 1
 
The IMP Shell is a powerful expert system development˙environment for
the IBM-PC. It contains all the utilities needed to develop˙and test
new expert systems,˙and run them when they are finalized.
All˙functions˙are menu driven and appear in windows.˙IMP˙expert
systems are rule based, backwards chaining systems. ˙They are very
fast and not limited by an artificially small number of rules. The
IMP˙Shell˙is˙in˙the public domain and˙is˙used˙in˙many educational
settings. It was developed by Daniel H. Marcellus of the
Middletown˙Programming ˙Works,˙Middletown, New York. It ˙is completely
described in ˙the book "Expert Systems Programming in Turbo Prolog"
which is written by Mr. ˙Marcellus, and published by Prentice- Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, N.J. (1987). An expert system is a program which has
captured the expertise of an expert in some field
and˙can˙deploy˙that˙expertise˙with seemingly˙intelligent behavior.
 
A shell makes it easy to set up an expert system by concentrating
on the problem at˙hand rather than on˙the˙details˙of˙a particular
machine˙reasoning˙system or˙artificial˙intelligence language.˙This
shell was written entirely in TURBO PROLOG,˙and the˙source code is
provided,˙although you don't need to˙understand anything˙about TURBO
PROLOG in order to set up an expert system ˙with this software.
 
The˙IMP Shell uses backward reasoning. ˙This means that it has the
proper architecture˙for˙creating˙good˙expert systems for
classification tasks, for troubleshooting,˙and, in general, for
anything that involves choosing among alternatives. ˙It˙is not˙the
proper architecture for applications that require˙a well defined
sequence of steps with complex reasoning going into the˙application of
each step. ˙Applications˙such as˙configuring complex equipment or
estimating costs of a project are of this sort. They should be
implemented with a forward chaining shell.
 
Usage:  Business/Professional Expert System development
 
System requirements:  PC-DOS 2.0 or higher with at least 512 K of
memory.  The system will run from a single dirve of any type.
 
How to start:  Place disk in your drive and type:  IMPSHELL  <return>
 
File Descriptions:
 
IMPSHELL PRO   Source code for the system
IMPSHELL EXE   Main program
IMPSHELL RUL   Sample expert system
IMPSHELL HLP   Help file used by the main program
README   TXT   Short description
IMPDESC1 TXT   Description file
IMPDESC2 TXT    "
 
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