Configuration as a Consistency Maintenance Task

This paper describes how a configuration task may be considered a problem of main- taining global consistency within a knowledge base. A consistency maintenance process should a) be able to deduce the consequences of new knowledge and b) detect logical contradictions on the basis of these inferences. Usually, this is done best by “read-time inferences”, i. e. inferences drawn immediately on arrival of new information. This leads to a configuration system that does not contain heuristic rules but just one inference mechanism responsible for processing the user’s input. The mechanism is embedded in MESON, a KL-ΟNE descendant, developed at PHILIPS Research Laboratories, Hamburg.