We built on previous work to develop an evaluation method that can be used to select expert system applications which are most likely to be successfully implemented. Both essential and desirable features of an expert system application are discussed. Essential features are used to ensure that the application does not require technology beyond the state of the art. Advice on helpful directions for evaluating candidate expert system applications is also given.

Second, the problem domain of the used be as good as possible. Two The application task requires little task is stable. This means that the characteristics of the domain expert or no common sense. Although domain should be well established can help determine the degree of researchers are continuing to study and unlikely to undergo vast changes expertise. First, the expert is highly the representation of commonsense during the life of the expert system respected by experienced people in the knowledge, no practical systems have project. This stability does not require domain field. Because the goal of the been developed to date (Lenat, that the problem-solving process project is often to simulate the Prakash, and Shepherd 1986). A problem required to perform the task be well expert's performance, this expert requiring common sense on the understood, simply that the basics of should be viewed by others as a genuine part of the expert should be left to a the task domain be established.

A large high-speed general-purpose digital computer (IBM 7090) wasProgrammed to solve elementary symbolic integration problems at approximatelythe level of a good college freshman. The program is called SAINT,an acronym for "Symbolic Automatic INTegrator." The SAINT programis written in LISP (McCarthy, 1960), and most of the work reported hereJs the substance of a doctoral dissertation at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (Slagle, 1961). This discussion concerns the SAINT programand its performance.Some typical samples of SAINT's external behavior are given so thatthe reader may think in concrete terms. Journal of the ACM, Vol 10, No. 4, pp. 507-520, October 1963.