An Internet-Based Expert System for Reptile Identification

The Internet offers a large potential for delivery of various information-based services, including the services of intelligent systems. This paper describes the development, architecture, and implementation of an Internet-based expert system that aids in the identification of amphibian and reptile species as part of an ongoing census of these species in Pennsylvania. The system is based upon a client-server design comprising components written in Java, Javascript, and HTML. The server-side inference capability is provided by the Java Expert System Shell (Jess), a recent variant of CLIPS that integrates Java object manipulation with rule-based inference.