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Decision tables are useful for documenting rules, confirming them with the
expert and making sure all combinations of conditions have been considered in
building the knowledge base.
A decision table consists of a condition stub listing the attributes that
may affect a decision and an action stub that lists possible decisions. Rules
are written vertically and indicate the values of the condition attributes that
will result in a specific decision. A dash in a condition or action cell means
the attribute in that row is not relevant to the rule defined by that column.
| Rule | 1 | 2 | 3 | ... |
|---|
| Starter runs? | Y | Y | N | |
| Smell gas? | Y | N | - | |
| Dead battery | - | - | X | |
| Out of gas | - | X | - | |
| Flooded | X | - | - | |
Rule 1 in this decision table could be translated to the following if...then rule:
If the starter runs and you smell gas then the car is flooded.
If you are interested in learning more about decision tables or how to use the e2gRuleWriter software
to build decision tables that can generate e2gRuleEngine knowledge bases, take a look at the
e2gRuleWriter Tutorial and Reference Documentation
in the Building and Using Expert Systems Mini-Course.
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