Web Enabled Expert Systems using Hyperlink-based Inference

With the proliferation of WWW, providing more intelligence to Web sites has become a major concern in e-business industry. In recent days, this trend is more accelerated by prosperity of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) in terms of various aspects such as product recommendation, self after service, etc. To accomplish this goal, many e-companies are eager to embed web enabled rule-based system, that is, expert systems into their Web sites and several well-known commercial tools are already available in the market. Most of those tools are developed based on CGI so far but CGI based systems inherently suffer over-burden problem when there are too many service demands at the same time due to the nature of CGI. To overcome this limitation of the existing CGI based expert systems, we propose a new form of Web-enabled expert system using hyperlink-based inference mechanism. In terms of burden to Web server, our approach is proven to outperform CGI based approach theoretically and also empirically. For practical purpose, our this approach is implemented in a software system, WeBIS and a graphic rule editing methodology, Expert Diagram is incorporated into the system to facilitates rule generation and maintenance. WeBIS is now successfully operated for financial consulting in the web site of a leading financial consulting company in Korea.