Rapid Prototyping of CBR Applications with the Open Source Tool myCBR

Although Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) claims to reduce the effort required for developing knowledge-based systems substantially compared with more traditional Artificial Intelligence approaches, the implementation of a CBR application from scratch is still a time consuming task. In this paper we present a novel, freely available tool for rapid prototyping of CBR applications that focuses on the similarity-based retrieval step, like for example case-based product recommender systems. By providing easy to use model generation, data import, similarity modeling, explanation, and testing functionality together with comfortable graphical user interfaces, the tool enables even CBR novices to rapidly create their first CBR applications. Nevertheless, at the same time it ensures enough flexibility to enable expert users to implement advanced CBR applications.