Domain knowledge

Domain knowledge is that valid knowledge used to refer to an area of human endeavour, an autonomous computer activity, or other specialized discipline.

Specialists and experts use and develop their own domain knowledge. If the concept domain knowledge or domain expert is used, we emphasize a specific domain which is an object of the discourse/interest/problem.

Knowledge capture

More particular, in software engineering, domain knowledge is knowledge about the environment in which the target system operates, for example, software agents. Domain knowledge is important, because it usually must be learned from software users in the domain (as domain specialists/experts), rather than from software developers. Expert’s domain knowledge (frequently informal and ill structured) is transformed in computer programs and active data, for example in a set of rules in knowledge bases, by knowledge engineers.

Communicating between end-users and software developers is often difficult. They must find a common language to communicate in. Developing enough shared vocabulary to communicate can often take a while.

The same knowledge can be included in different domain knowledge. Knowledge which may be efficient in every domain is called domain-independent knowledge, for example logics and mathematics. Operations on domain knowledge are performed by meta-knowledge.

Literature

Hjørland, B. & Albrechtsen, H. (1995). Toward A New Horizon in Information Science: Domain Analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 1995, 46(6), 400-425.

See also

• Domain engineering
• Knowledge engineering
• Artificial Intelligence