that are necessary to perform reasoning steps that generate an answer or an action that responds to the input request 1203 2 an interface that allows for receiving one or more inquiries that come in the form of semi structured natural language sentences that use semantic elements from the regulatory knowledge base and that allows for sending one or more answers in the form of semi structured natural language sentences that respond to the input inquiries 1201 and 3 various interfaces that allow for communicating with other systems or services 1205 available in the environment in which the reasoning engine platform is deployed the regulatory knowledge base constructed and represented as described herein can be maintained in a variety of ways first it can be edited using specialized editors such as a combination of excel like spreadsheet tools with macros and sql script editors that allow for manipulation of the knowledge elements described herein such editors are usually components 1206 of the reasoning engine platforms and they allow for manipulation of semantic knowledge elements and rules of knowledge bases as shown in fig1 in addition some reasoning engines may have learning capabilities and knowledge base validation tools that facilitate and may improve the process of updating or adding of knowledge elements such learning and validation processes are feasible due to the structure of the regulatory knowledge base having.