The following describes the environments. Development Environment Instant Tea's development environment provides a graphical interface for creating agent knowledge bases. The system also includes an integrated testing environment to facilitate rapid prototyping of knowledge bases. The development environment provides a way to easily build and maintain knowledge bases. The environment speeds development and testing of complex business rules by combining object-orientation and logic processing.
Objects help knowledge engineers manage complexity and ease maintenance of knowledge bases.
Logic processing allow knowledge engineers to separate inference strategies from domain knowledge. The system support multiple inheritance to simply the structure of knowledge bases. Subclasses inherit attributes of super classes and changes to super classes are automatically reflected in subclasses. Attributes may be added or removed from subclasses to extend and restrict super classes. These inheritance facilities support knowledge construction and maintenance by allowing developers to expand or collapse hierarchies when updating domain objects or defining rules.