Greetings,

Our organization is designing a Customer Service database system
(Oracle) which will provide agents with an automated method to
determine a customer's problem and provide a solution or answer (much
like a technical help desk, but this is not a technical industry).
Answers to certain questions raised by the agent (prompted by the
system) will determine how the agent is to respond and inquire more
deeply to determine the customer's actual issue. Based on historical
data, the agent will be able to answer the customer's question or
solve his problem. The data will be self-improving: as more new
issues are resolved, the database will be updated to automatically
provide the same resolution in the future. I believe this is a
typical example of what is termed an "expert system"; please correct
me if I'm wrong.

I know this design is not a new concept. I am looking for advice
(responses here, white papers, etc.) to guide me with examples of a
tried-and-true database design for this type of system. I'm not
looking for an exact solution to my problem (hence the very general
overview); I simply want to discover any caveats that others may have
experienced designing a similar system. Don't want to reinvent the
wheel here.

Thanks in advance.

Bryan Jackson
FAALC Information Systems Group, AML-41
Lockheed Martin Information Technology