"At the highest level of generality, a general CBR cycle may be described by the following four processes:

1. RETRIEVE the most similar case or cases
2. REUSE the information and knowledge in that case to solve the problem
3. REVISE the proposed solution
4. RETAIN the parts of this experience likely to be useful for future problem solving "

– Case-Based Reasoning: Foundational Issues, Methodological Variations, and System Approaches. Agnar Aamodt & Enric Plaza. AI Communications. IOS Press, Vol. 7: 1, pp. 39-59.