I wonder if you guys could help me out.   
      
   One of my colleagues is working on a project and I remarked to him that   
   his problem can be solved (well, more easily) using description logics.   
    It was easy for me to talk to him about knowledge representation and   
   inference and subsumption because we're programmers. But I wondered how   
   I would describe  KR in non-technical terms to a business guy.   
      
   Hypothetically, let's say an MBA asks me about why they should use a   
   knowledge base instead of a database; they have purchased Oracle (just   
   an example) licenses and they want to know if there's an advantage to   
   using a knowledgebase.   
      
   So I say something like:   
   1.  A knowledgebase is usually very much smaller than a database --   
   maybe a few hundred concepts organized hierarchically at most.   
      
   2.  A knowledgebase is usually used for reasoning tasks rather than   
   data collection and aggregation.   
      
   3.  Meaning is preserved and maintained in a knowledgebase while in a   
   database the meaning of data must be established by the database   
   programmer through SQL statements.   
      
   Okay -- any other reasons or situations where you would use a   
   knowledgebase over a database?  Thanks, I'm not real familiar with this   
   field, so I would appreciate hearing your thoughts.   
      
   -Rand   
      
   (please, please do not email me a response because I'm running a spam   
   experiment. Thank you, sorry about the email - just something I've been   
   running for a long time and I don't want to stop).   
      
   [ comp.ai is moderated.  To submit, just post and be patient, or if ]   
   [ that fails mail your article to , and ]   
   [ ask your news administrator to fix the problems with your system. ]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)