Evaluation of jCOLIBRI Master Thesis Report

Abstract:

Artificial Intelligence is aiming to make computer behave more intelligent, therefore the
endeavor in this cause are resulting in the formation of subfields among which Case-Based
Reasoning, CBR is one active research area. jCOLIBRI is a tool for the development of the
CBR based application. Therefore its comparison with other available tools will assist the
developer to make use of the best available tool for the CBR based application. The
deficiency of the previous tools involves the too much of coding and non-built in methods
which is making those tool rigid and complex to use. Flexibility and theoretical comparison
for the performance of the jCOLIBRI with respect to other tools has been done for its
evaluation, furthermore detail description of jCOLIBRI methods, classified tasks, connectors
and case structure has been discussed to understand the basic architecture of jCOLIBRI.
To make the ground for the evaluation of jCOLIBRI the basics of CBR techniques has been
discussed, in which detail description of five techniques of CBR has been given and then the
implementation of these five techniques has been discussed in jCOLIBRI, for the testing of
jCOLIBRI the example from the medical base application has been implemented. Evaluation
of jCOLIBRI resulted in the lacks the stability, but even thou, the built in methods, objected
oriented framework, XML classes, java platform and implementation of CBR Onto has
increased its potential for the emergence of jCOLIBRI as an excellent application for the
development of CBR based systems.

Acknowledgements

We are extremely grateful to our supervisor Shahina Begum for providing us an opportunity
to get the in-depth knowledge of CBR-Based tools. We also acknowledge to Professor Peter
Funk for his support and encouragement and give us an opportunity to work on this project.
We are thankful to Mr. Mobyen for his intuitive ideas. Last but not the least we owe this
achievement to our family for their encouragement though being thousands miles away.

1 Introduction

Today’s CBR-based applications are used very commonly in many different fields. It is very

hot subfield of AI which is growing rapidly. In past, we have to make decision on provided

general knowledge. In CBR, previous experience is also used to make a decision. CBR-based

tools are used to help in building CBR-based application. jCOLIBRI is a CBR-based tool. In

2002, Belen Diaz-Agudo [19] developed domain independent architecture called COLIBRI. It

was a very good tool but non-expert users cannot use that tool. Then jCOLIBRI, an objectoriented

framework tool was developed. It is a technical evaluation of COLIBRI. jCOLIBRI

is an object-oriented framework in Java, based on CBROnto, built to support COLIBRI

architecture which has increased its usability among the CBR users. The framework design

comprises a hierarchy of Java classes plus a number of XML files organized around the

following elements: it includes tasks and methods, case base, cases and problem solving

methods. In uses a distributed environment a DLs engine, GUI clients for assembling a CBR

system from reusable components and an object-oriented framework in Java.

The goal of this thesis work is to evaluate the jCOLIBRI tool. So for this thesis “Evaluation of

jCOLIBRI” we have started with the background study of the case based reasoning,

describing the problem solving and learning in CBR, as well as the fundamental methods and

advantages of using CBR are discussed. A brief overview of CBR cycle and the terminology,

algorithm being used by the CBR process were also described. The case representation,

indexing, storage, retrieval and case adaptation have been viewed. Domain dependent and

domain independent CBR tools like CBR express, Recall , remind, Art Enterprise, case

power, Kate, case advisor, eclipse, esteem, case 1, Casuel and Caspian have been explored

with the advantages and features provided by them, so this will be helpful in theoretical

comparison of these tools with jCOLIBRI.

In this thesis, jCOLIBRI is used to implement a CBR application with real world data from

medical domain in Parkinson disease [24] to evaluate the performance and check how this

tool can be used to develop a new CBR based application. This application is used for

suggesting fluctuation by using pervious similar cases. For performing CBR classified tasks

jCOLIBRI platform methods and techniques are used. Four major tasks are performed in

jCOLIBRI to develop CBR application. Tasks are managing case structure, connectors, tasks

and methods. At the end we evaluate jCOLIBRI, how flexible its methods are for developers

to make a new application? What are the problems those have to face with jCOLIBRI? What

is the limitation of jCOLIBRI? How can we modify its method? We also give some

suggestions or conclusion to improve its performance.

The whole report of our thesis work is consisted on 8 chapters. Chapter 2 consists on the

background knowledge of CBR, its techniques and terminologies to solve CBR problems.

Chapter 3 contains the review of different CBR tools other than jCOLIBRI. Chapter 4

includes the sole description of the jCOLIBRI that include how an application can be

developed, how task/method can be configured, defining case structure, loading and

configuration of the CBR application. Chapter 5 has description of our implementation work,

about real data and application classified task. This chapter also contains information about

case representation of jCOLIBRI with CBRonto concept. Chapter 6 is based on evaluation of

jCOLIBRI and with some suggestion to make it more reliable. The theoretical comparison of

this tool with other CBR bas tools also included in this chapter. Chapter 7 is about summary

of our whole work and last chapter contain detailed references.

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