Knowledge maintenance: the state of the art

Abstract

In the software and knowledge engineering literature we can find maintenance strategies offered to maintain seven main types of knowledge: words; sentences; behavioral knowledge; and meta-knowledge. Meta-knowledge divides into problem solving methods, quality knowledge, fix knowledge, social knowledge and processing activities. There are five main ways in which these seven knowledge types are processed: acquire, operationalise, fault, fix and preserve. We review systems that contribute to these 7*5 = 35 types of knowledge maintenance to make the following conclusions. First, open issues with the current maintenance research are identified. These include (a) areas that are not being addressed by any researcher; (b) the recursive maintenance problem; and (c) drawbacks with rapid acquire systems and the operationalisation KM assumption. Secondly, a process is described for commissioning a new maintenance tool. Thirdly, a general common principle for maintenance (search-space reflection) is isolated.