A domain expert or subject matter expert (SME) is a person with special knowledge or skills in a particular area. Domain experts are individuals who are both knowledgeable and extremely experienced with application domains http://nas.cl.uh.edu/helm/swen5534/Do_Ans/tsld002.htm. Dealing primarily with knowledge-based systems (KBS) domain experts are responsible for maintaining, testing, and enhancing the corporate memory sector of the KBS systems. By solving enriched and complicated technical and mathematical problems, domain experts display information in a logical fashion so that it can be easily coded into a computer system, allowing ease of use by end-users of the KBS systems http://esdg.cas.psu.edu/expsystm.htm.
A truck driver is an expert in trucking and the needs truckers have for the types of systems that truckers might use, such as delivery or inventory system.
Domain Experts play a defined role in the creation and maintenance of expert systems. Starting at the top of the totem pole of information, the domain expert relays encrypted information on systems management directly to the Knowledge Engineer who then passes this information onto coders who code the information into the systems database. Highly trained in knowledge acquisition and representation domain experts display their tested information in the form of rules and diagrams making the tasks of computer coders as simplistic as possible. Due to their immense knowledge of expert systems and their details, domain experts are often not able to communicate their findings in simplistic terms, which is why the knowledge engineers are employed to decipher their findingshttp://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/KAW/KAW96/simon/KAW96US.htmhttp://www.cs.vu.nl/~frankh/postscript/IEAAIE00.pdf.
Alternate Term Uses
The term can also refer to someone particularly familiar with a group, or its work habits, and can act as a usability evaluator.
The most common use of the term is in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially for expert systems, where the attempt is made to deduce and codify the expertise as a series of rules.
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