This paper gives an overview about the development of the field of Knowledge Engineering over the last 15 years. We discuss the paradigm shift from a transfer view to a modeling view and describe two approaches which considerably shaped research in Knowledge Engineering: Role-limiting Methods and Generic Tasks. To illustrate various concepts and methods which evolved in the last years we describe three modeling frameworks: CommonKADS, MIKE, and PROTÉGÉ-II. This description is supplemented by discussing some important methodological developments in more detail: specification languages for knowledge-based systems, problem-solving methods, and ontologies. We conclude with outlining the relationship of Knowledge Engineering to Software Engineering, Information Integration and Knowledge Management.
