arn about the data and to validate the extracted knowledge. It is considered as a “white box” rather than a “ black box” like in the case of neural network. The cloud theory is introduced and the mathematical description of cloud has effectively integrated the fuzziness and randomness of linguistic terms in a unified way. Based on it, a method of knowledge representation in DFDS is developed which bridges the gap between quantitative knowledge and qualitative knowledge. In relation to classical rough set, the cloud-rough method can deal with the uncertainty of the attribute and make a soft discretization for continuous ones (such as the current and the voltage). A novel approach, including discretization, attribute reduction, rule reliability computation and equipment reliability computation, is presented. The data redundancy is greatly reduced based on an integrated use of cloud theory and rough set theory. Illustrated with a power distribution DFDS shows the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed approach.