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5. CBR TOOLS

CBR technology gained prominence with the emergence of commercial software tools, some of which are listed in Table 1.

Table 2 shows some general categories of applications, and the suitablility of some of the tools mentioned earlier, based on the report by Althoff, K.D et. al in 1996. A black bullet [bullet] indicates that the tool is likely to be suited to the domain. A [closed diamond] indicates that the tool's features can be extended in order to cope with the domain. The symbol [flower], given to CBR Express for help-desk applications, reflects the fact that this tool has been specially designed to cope with this particular domain. A review of the commercial tools can be found in Althoff et al. (1996).

However, at this point in time, these tools are not sufficiently powerful to meet all the requirements normally posed by real-world applications. While CBR2 from Inference Corporation can be considered sufficiently mature for the help-desk/customer-support applications; for other types of applications (such as planning, forecasting, design, etc.), the commercial tools need more powerful and flexible functionalities such as communication and integration with other applications (for embedded systems) and databases (for import and export of records from existing databases). A development environment that provides better support for building case libraries, and algorithms for more effective search and retrieval of cases, are needed to improve the performance of case-based systems. To overcome these shortcomings, tool developers need to consider combining CBR with other problem-solving mechanisms (mixed paradigm reasoning) to produce integrated architectures for hybrid systems (see later paragraph on hybrid systems).

6. RESEARCH CHALLENGES

While CBR sounds simple enough, there are still unresolved weaknesses at this point in time. There are three main issues:

  • Case representation
  • Case indexing
  • Case adaptation and learning

TABLE 1
CBR Tools
 
Tool name Vendor
 
CBR 2 version 2.0 (incorporating CBR-Express Inference Corporation
  and CasePoint) 101 Rowland Way, Suite 310
  Nocato, California 94945
ReMind version 1.3 Cognitive System Inc.
  220-230 Commercial Street
  Boston, MA 02109
CASECRAFT, the KATE tools AcknoSoft
  (KATE-INDUCTION, KATE-CBR, 58a, Rue du Dessous des Berger, 75013
  KATE-EDITOR, KATE-RUNTIME) Paris, France and
  version 4.0396 Shasta Drive
  Palo Alto CA 94306-4541
ESTEEM version 1.4 Esteem Software Inc.
  302E Main Street
  Cambridge City, IN 47327
ReCall version 1.2 Isoft
  Chemin de Moulon
  F-91190 Gif sur Yvette
  France
S3-CASE version 1.0 tecInno GmbH
  Sauerwiesen 2
  67661 KAISERSLAUTERN
  Germany
MEM-1 version 1.0 CECASE
  2291 Irving Hill Road
  Lawrence, KS 66045-2969
CasePower Inductive Solution Inc.
  380 Rector Place, Suit 4A
  New York, NY 10280
Eclipse The Haley Enterprise Inc.
  413 Orchard Street
  Sewickley, PA 15143
CASE-1 Astea International
  55 Middlesex Turnpike
  Dedford, MA 01730


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