Rohan, While Guyren is right in that you haven't given us much to go on, an expert system may be overkill for producing a useful troubleshooting site. Or it may not. It depends on how much information you want to take into account when sending the user to the next question, which is related to how "linear" the system is. Most of the (mostly inadequate, but sometimes useful anyway) troubleshooting I've encountered is very linear. Giving a certain answer seems to skip you over some questions, but never starts a new line of inquiry, there is really only one line, and so it need not take into account more than the answer to the current question to select the next.
An off-the-shelf expert system-based troubleshooter potentially encapsulate a lot of expert knowledge, but it could be expensive to get the expert knowledge into the system. Depends on the complexity of what you're troubleshooting. Perhaps there is some middle ground out there that someone has come up with. Or perhaps the linear approach is all you need. Scott On Jan 21, 12:52 pm, Guyren Howe <[email protected]> wrote: > > I’m afraid that you haven’t given us enough to go on here, Rohan. > > The appropriate data structure depends on what you are trying to achieve. A > tree suggests you want a definite sequence with an ending, either going from > a leaf to the root or vice-versa. A more general graph structure suggests > your users will be able to wander from question to question more loosely. > > It sounds like you’re trying to write an expert system. I would suggest you > start by doing some reading in that area. -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
