The dictionary

Attributes are described by a data structure called the dictionary. The dictionary is constructed by analyzing a rule base to determine the following properties needed for compilation of an expert system.

• the function of each attribute (it can be input, output or inter),
• the type, which could be string, boolean, real or integer,
• the set of relevant values the attribute is compared to,
• the cardinality of the range of an attribute, which represents the total number of allowable values, or intervals for that attribute .