Requirements for Successful Verification in Practice

Many large scale companies use knowledge-based systems (KBS) to support their decision making processes. The quality of the decisions made depend on the quality of the underlying knowledge. It has been stated many times that verification techniques can be used to improve decision making and the quality of the knowledge rules in a knowledge based system. Furthermore, verification is seen as one of the key issues in system certification. After a short introduction to the current state of the art of knowledge verification this paper describes a verification technique used in a commercial development environment for knowledge intensive applications: VALENS. We will describe the experiences with VALENS in some recently finished experiments. Based on these results and an overview of the literature we will discuss the discrepancies between verification in practice and verification in theoretical / scientific situations. This leads us to an overview of the requirements for successful verification in practice. Obeying these requirements will increase the return on investment for knowledge based systems.