Wanderings of the Mind

Connectionism and the Mind

2011-12-01T12:45:00.005-06:00

Greetings:

Reprinted in 2007, original 2nd Edition in 2002, by William Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen, Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-20713-9.

A friend recommended three books for me to read if I wanted to pursue my research on Parallel Computing. This was one of them. If you can find a copy (purchase or library), the story on page 12 about the two sisters of AI is really worth repeating. I don't have permission to plagerize but the title page does authorize short passages for review. So, here 'tis (actually taken from Seymour Papert's book on Perceptrons, page 3):

Once upon a time, two daughter sciences were born to the new science of cybernetics. One sister was natural, with features inherited from the study of the brain, from the way nature does things. The other was artificial, related from the beginning to the use of computers. Each of the sister sciences tried to build models of intelligence, but from very different materials. The natural science sister built models (called neural networks) out of mathematically purified neurones. The artificial sister built her models out of computer programs.
In their first bloom of youth the two sisters were quite equally successful and equally pursued by suitors from other fields of knowledge. They got on very well together. Their relationship changed in the early sixties when a new monarch appeared, one with the largest coffers ever seen in the kingdom of sciences. Lord DARPA, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency. The artificial sister grew jealous and was determined to keep for herself the access to Lord DARPA'a research funds. The natural sister would have to be slain.
The bloody work was attempted by two staunch followers of the artificial sister, Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, cast in the rold of the huntsman sent to slay Snow White and bring back her heart as proof of the deed. Their weapon was not the dagger but the mighter pen, from which came a book - Perceptrons... (1988, p.3)

And that was the extent of humour in the book. Now, about the rest of the book; it is extremely well laid out and covers Parallel Procssing, Dynamics and Evolutions in Networks (as it says on the cover page) from a new and updated outlook and perspective. This is a thoughtful and well-thought-out approach to Connectionism, Modeling and Neural Networks as well as discussing Rules and other related topics. I especially appreciated the complete overview of the entire field of computers versus psychology versus the mind itself. Meaning that if you are doing rulebased systems, psychology, neural networks, AI or anything loosely associated with those fields, it might be helpful to what you are doing. According to others, it is a great improvement on the original book published in 1991. I think that the reprint corrected some earlier misprints in the 2002 edition.

The chapters are:

Networks versus Symbol /systems: Two Approaches to Modeling Cognition
Connectionist Architectures
Learning
Patterns and Recognition
Are Rules Required to Process Representation?
Are Syntactically Structured Representations Needed?
Simulating Higher Cognition: A Modular Architecture For Processing Scripts
Connectionism and the Dynamical Approach to Cognition
Networks, Robots and Artificial Life
Connectionism and the Brain

A short read (350 pages total text plus other stuff) and, while mostly centered on neural networks, it covers other fields as well. Unlike most books on neural networks, the math is simple enough for those who have forgotten most of what they learned in school. Summation is about as hard as it gets. The Rulebased (BRMS) guys will probably turn first to Chapter 5 (as did I) and then discover that they need to read the previous four chapters for it to fit what the author is saying in that chapter. The final chapter is the capstone of the book (as it should be) and brings everything together nicely. Read through the table of contents first and get a good idea of the lay of the land and what you're going to discover. Consider it a map of a new and wonderous adventure.

As with the other books that I have been privileged to read recently, Buy The Book! Even it you have the 1991 or the earlier 2002 editions, this one is an improvement. Also, it makes for a nice addition on your book shelf. If nothing else, it might impress your girl/boy friend or wife/husband that you are an in-depth "thinker" who is entitled to be a little strange sometimes. (Your cherished off-spring probably will never see it and, if they do, they will think you are really weird - which, sometimes, is nice.) And, maybe, you might read it and discover a whole new world. For those who HAVE already read it (or will read it in the future) I would appreciate your comments. And, please: Don't say things like, "Great book." or "Really liked it" only in your comment. Try to be more specific about what you thought of the book. OK, maybe "Really liked it" would be permissible, but, honestly, try to pretend that you actually struggled through the whole thing. :-)

SDG
jco

Brief Review of "Agile Business Rule Development"

2011-11-02T09:36:00.008-05:00

Greetings:

[Rewrite 1] Two of the industry's leading gurus of rulebased systems, Dr. Hafedh Mili of UQAM (University of Quebec at Montreal) and Jerome Boyer (pronounced Boy-yaa for those who don't handle French very well) have blazed some new ground with their book on ABRD, Agile Business Rule Development.

Dr. Mili wrote all of the training manuals for ILOG up through version 3.x somewhere as well as being heavily involved in versions 4, 5 and 6. Jerome is a Senior Solutions Architect for IBM / Websphere / ILOG. Dr. Mili has been involved with JRules andILOG since 1996 and Jerome has been doing JRules since 2000 [ref: Dr. Mili]. More on that later.

Anyway, on to a review of the book. The extremely brief accompanying web site is http://agilebrdevelopment.wordpress.com/ but, to date, there is only one comment - I'll add mine after I complete my reading of the book. Let's just say that this is an overview or a synopsis of what I found and think.

First, the darker side: Reading through the table of contents is always a good start in any review of a book. This particular book is divided into eight parts. The introduction contains a couple of different approaches to reading and using the book. The parts are:

Introduction
Methodology
Foundations
Rule Authoring (JRules only)
Rule Deployment
Rule Testing
Rule Governance
Epilogue

The other place to which I normally go next is to review the references that I might expect to find in the book or article. This book does contain a fairly decent set of (brief) references in the back. Yes, they also referenced Dr. Forgy's work on the original Rete algorithm although I doubt that more than 15 or 20 people in the world actually have sweated through the original Ph.D. thesis (all in LISP) and understand totally how it works. Dr. Mili has been through the synopsis and is responsible for the early implementations of Rete in ILOG Rules (C/C++ version that has been discontinued) and somewhat in JRules.

In any event, Dr. Mili and Jerome did a "fair-to-middling" job of research disclosure but nothing really exciting nor earth-shattering. BUT, remember that this is a book that focuses on the agile approach to writing rules and not the MYCIN approach to more advanced rule writing, even though MYCIN is referenced in the back of the book. (As a matter of fact, I know of only one or two guys from the Rules Fest who have sweated through the MYCIN approach.) The references are broken up into these sections:

Books
Articles and Papers (Trade Journals, Magazines, etc)
Web Sites (lots of them)
Documents (standards, web documents, etc)
Tools (short list of most common BRMS and Open Source)

[Ed.Note: Dr. Mili's Ph.D. was in AI and he did quite a bit of research on MYCIN and eMYCIN during that period. However, he says, "I made a deliberate decision not to make it into an academic book because, a) that is not the public we are targeting, and b) rule engine science and technology is NOT where the main challenges in implementing business rules in the industry lay." A good enough reason, although I personally would like to see more medical systems and insurance underwriting systems - among other - research the approach of MYCIN and make rulebased systems once again a real AI product and not just and IF-THEN-ELSE rulebased Rete system.]

The end of each chapter also contains a "Further Reading" paragraph pertaining to that chapter that is sometimes a bit brief but in others quite good and extensive.

There is one drawback: All of the examples are in JRules, a very expensive -and very good -commercial product. However, JRules is very similar to Blaze Advisor, Drools or OPSJ. I would that they had used either an Open Source product or use very generic, English-style rules. They do explain their reasoning for using JRules in the introduction. But I found it kind of weak, especially considering that both of them have been tightly coupled with IBM/ILOG for many years. They said that their second choice would have been Drools (an Open Source product form Mark Proctor) which was OK. Even so, they kind of danced around the FICO Blaze Advisor product, which is the number one or number two commercial product in the market place.

Just a personal aside: I would say that there are only two or three real BRMS products on the market today; JRules, Blaze Advisor and Pega Rules. Drools (the free Apache Open Source product) from JBoss is rapidly gaining ground with "Guvnor" and other additions. Probably by the next year or so, they will have caught up with the most obvious parts of a BRMS, especially if they get their debug reporting tools done up to date. But, I wander...

The book is well divided in sections and they do a really good job of explaining ABRD, Agile Business Rule Development. However, I am no longer being a big fan of acronyms since FICO, ILOG and InfoWorld (yours truly) coined BRMS (Business Rules Management System) to my chagrin back in 2003 and then promoted it to the business world. Further, I don't favor writing a book using acronyms that are not an industry standard. That could be because I'm just resistant to rapid change for the sake of being "cool". In addition, I'm not a huge fan of the Agile methods since they were first introduced several years ago. But, still some of the methods are quite good and acceptable. (Yes, I know I'm sounding wisy-washy, but I'm just expressing my distaste for Agile while still finding some useful things in it.) I found trying to fit rulebased systems to the Agile methods to be the same as trying to find patterns for rules. (We have been trying to do that at Rules Fest for four years now.) [See Carole Ann's comment below about the Agile methods.]

Finally, as part of full disclosure, everyone needs to know that I have worked with both Hafedh and Jerome on various projects and all of these statements above are my own personal opinions. I have tried to the best of my ability to forget that we are good friends and talk about the book from an objective point of view.

Good Part: BUY THE BOOK !! Especially if you have never done an enterprise rulebased project and need a guide. It is easy reading if you are a good programmer and not highly technical. However, it might not be really easy reading if you are not a programmer but, even so,it would be well worth your time to read the management parts. Even some of us older troops could learn a thing or two from their fairly lucid explanations of what they are trying to accomplish with a particular chapter or section. The parts where they use JRules code is easily readable by most programmers and even most managers.

SDG

jco

RuleBased Forecasting, RBF, Part 1

2011-11-01T15:33:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

I have been asked several times, "How can RBF help me in my business?" A simplistic view of RBF is that RBF is an amalgamation of statistics, rules and data curve matching. By adjusting certain parameters of the curve matching using well-defined and proven-over-time methods and procedures, each iteration of the rules (rules always run over and over) should yield closer and closer match to the real data so that the forecast data are far more correct. Basically, the rules help the forecaster in giving the forecaster a highly accurate initial forecast. The forecaster, of course, can always change some of the parameters of the rules so that he/she can see the difference in what would happen. What a great training tool for forecasters!!

OK, that sales pitch being said, what about some examples? Hopefully, next year at Rules Fest, we will be able to show the rules working on real data (hopefully some massive data sets) and show how changing one small parameter can have drastic (good or bad) effects on the outcome. In the meantime, just drop me a line about what you and/or your company is doing in the field of forecasting. Are you using Linear Regression, Multiple Linear Regression, Box Jenkins, Neural Networks, Econometric Forecasting or what? Sometimes a smaller (or even some rather large) companies don not use ANY software to help with this complex problem. This is what we call, "Flying by the seat of your pants." solution. That SOP solution can get a company burned badly. However, relying on poor data or insufficient data can get you into hot water as well.

For example, if you are using monthly data, you need (OK, should have) at least 5 years (60 months) of really clean data from various internal and/or external sources to give the RBF a chance of accuracy. Other systems that use cycles of yearly data or non-standard cycles, are tougher but a decent RBF should be able to handle that in the curve matching routines and, again, if the system has sufficient data then the forecasting tool will have a much better chance of fitting the forecast to the provided data.

Hopefully, I'll have some more on this next week.

SDG

jco

(October) Rules Fest 2011, Part Deux

2011-10-31T10:52:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

That "Cosa Nostra" (our thing) that Greg Barton, Rolando Hernandez and I started in 2008 as nothing more than a gathering of geeks and nerds has been transformed into a real conference by Charles Young and Jason Morris; complete with continental breakfast every morning; sponsor-provided lunch (no vendor pitch during lunch this year) with fish, beef and/or pork, really good veggies and salads. They also provided a really good evening affair (shrimp, ice cream, tandoori chicken strips, etc, for "Pub Time" - complete with an open bar for those who stayed around.

Very few folks went out anywhere at night - most stayed in the conference "Pub" for chatting and the free bar. The conference is now branching into AI and Machine Learning, Event-Driven Process Management, Predictive Analytics and RuleBased Forecasting. I was the only one doing RBF this year while Carlos Seranno-Morales (formerly chief engineer for FICO and now Chief Engineer for Sparkling Logic) will be doing the Predictive Analytics next year. But the invited speakers, such as Dr. Ng and Dr. Tabet, were/are some of the absolute best in their respective fields. We also had the other creators of rulebased systems such as Paul Haley (Inference and Haley AI), Dr. Jacob Feldman (Open Rules) and Mark Proctor (Drools). The ONLY one missing was Dr. Friedman-Hill (Jess) but we had the only approved instructor for Jess there in the form of Jason Morris.

I don't feel that they really gave Dr. Forgy (inventor of the Rete, Rete 2, Rete III and Rete NT Algorithms for rulebased system) the publicity that he deserved in the brochures nor the home page, no formal presentation (he probably was thankful for that), etc. Maybe it was something that he and Jason arranged since he really is not a big-time vendor but more of a "skunk works" (meaning a research center). He only had a scripted chat with Carlos Seranno-Morales during a Wednesday afternoon session. Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon (CEO of Sparkling Logic) was asking questions of Carlos and Dr. Forgy. Dr. Forgy is now Chief Scientist for Sparkling Logic that was started by Carole Ann and Carlos. Remember, this year we were in San Francisco and only a stones throw from Palo Alto, home of most early Internet companies as well as Stanford, one of the four big AI Universities. (CMU, MIT and Boston College being the other three.)

They stuck Rolo and myself in the small breakout sessions rather than boring everyone with it. Rolo was highly upset and felt insulted because originally both he and I had been scheduled to do our presentations for the entire conference and there was not enough of an audience in the break-outs, usually about 10 or 12 per track. Probably his presentation would be a better fit for The Rule Forum with Ron Ross; I know that he would get a much bigger audience. Especially since he told everyone that he no longer does any code work, which is a Bozo-No-No at the (O)RF conference. Me? Well, truthfully, RBF is highly mathematical (which most programmers forgot when they left school) and, unless you are really into statistics and such, it might be a bit boring. But, for those who are having to do that kind of thing, it was a bit of fun to see that Rules Fest is growing and getting into more and more things.

I didn't stick around for the Thursday and Friday boot camps on Drools, Jess and Open Rules. I'm sure that they were quite good but having grown up with Drools and Jess I would have learned less than the other attendees and probably would have been quite a drag by asking too many "high-level" questions. Dr. Friedman-Hill once asked Richard Halsey (now deceased) to please quit pestering the beginners on his email support lines with statements such as RTFM, Read the Fabulous Manual.

All-in-all, I think that we are watching the development of something wonderful; the birth of a really, truly unique conference; one that is dedicated to the technical aspects of what we are doing rather the the more visible parts, vendor success stories and product demos. As a matter of fact, this is the bridge between the RuleML / RIF / OMG and other semi-technical conference and Rule Forum.

SDG

jco

(October) Rules Fest 2011 Day 2

2011-10-25T15:20:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

This conference has been truly outstanding. I had one rule godfather tell me that I should get the video of Paul Haley because it was truly outstanding. The afternoon sessions are great - right now I'm "cheating" because I'm supposed to be watching Carlos Seranno-Morales talk on Data Analytics for Rule Writers, etc. Ronald Bowers of the US Army Research gave an excellent talk on writing rules for very large hospitals for those with massive injuries of soldiers returning from the war front. (He has even read the work on the MYCIN project by Buchannan and Shortliffe.) Fred McClimas gave a talk yesterday on 2020 Foundation for discovering and determining the effect of event-driven rules and systems that would "see" the Tsumani in Japan and alert all markets on the forecast of what would be the fallout in various industries. Fascinating stuff all around. If you didn't come, come next year.

SDG

jco

ORF 2011 and other stuff

2011-10-16T09:24:00.001-05:00

October Rules Fest, aka, Rules Fest, is coming up rapidly: Monday, October 24th to be exact. AND, it's going to be in San Francisco just a few miles from the Airport with a shuttle from the airport to the Hilton and/or the conference in the Hyatt Regency. The ORF motto changed last year to "By Developers, for Developers."

So, having racked up thousands and thousands of air miles AND thousands of Hilton points, I'll probably stay in the Hilton and shuttle to the Hyatt just five (really long) blocks away. This conference features such notables as

Dr. Charles Forgy (Rete, Rete 2, Rete 3 and Rete NT)
Paul Haley, inventor of Haley Expert Rules.
Dr. Said Tabet, RuleML Guru
Carlos Seranno-Morales, inventor of the FIRST Java-based BRMS
Career Center for those job hunters out there'
Three days of Exhibitions by Vendors
And, of course, Mark Proctor and the Drools team
Dr. Jacob Feldman, inventor of Open Rules
Daniel Selman, guiding light behind JRules from ILOG/IBM
Boot Camps on
Drools (Mark Proctor)
Rule-Based Design Patterns (Wolfgang Laun)
SOAR Architecture (Nate Derbinsky)

Now, to the blog itself. I had a spina bifida corrected (spinal surgery for eight hours!) so I was out of touch for a few months beginning in May. The, it took over two months to get my password reset because Google kept sending me around in circles. Over and over and over again. Finally, today, they let me give them my "secret" info to get in rather than going through the password reset routine. So, the news is that this will no longer be just about rules, rulebased systems and things like that. From now on, I think that I will follow the title of the blog and just wander around on various topics.

Governor Rick Perry: Please don't vote for this guy unless his opponent is a complete idiot. Rick Perry brought lots and lots of jobs to Texas, true; but they are pretty much mostly low paying, minimum wage, 30-hour per week without benefits, jobs. Texas is rapidly becoming an outsourcing country, er, state. I would vote for him over Obama, Malkin, Palin or that other guy who is a Democrat that tries to look Republican. On the other hand, somebody might emerge at this late date who is a real leader.

Obama: You know, every elected President (even Carter and Ford were Lieutenants in the Navy) had prior military service. The exception seems to be Obama. Well, as Perry said, it was apparently his choice and he chose to stay in Chicago and play politics. Personally, I don't know how he gets the gumption to return a salute from a military officer as "Commander in Chief." Maybe that's why he turned down the sale of the F-16s to Taiwan today; whether to get back at Perry (F-16s are made here in Texas) or because he supports Red Communist China against their main (and tiny) foe, Taiwan. [See? I told you I was going to just wander around from now on.]

Forecasting: Well, my short talk this year at ORF 2011 will pick up from last year with more details and more math and a preview of the rules and why we need them. So, if you want to attend my talk, get last years' presentation from ORF 2010 and you'll be ready to take off on Part Two of RuleBased Forecasting, RBF. Right now I have about 100 rules but we'll only discuss two or four of them. After all, there is a bit of math to cover first - nothing tough; just summations and first order derivatives.

My Plans for the future: Probably heading to another gig for three or four months and then off to graduate school to do my Ph.D. in AI if everything gets worked out OK; probably focusing on stats and/or forecasting. Maybe - depends on which mentor I get at the university. The Forgenator has been bugging me about this for years now. I figure if Col. Sanders could start his empire of KFC at age 66, then I can do my Ph.D. and teach somewhere the rest of my life. ("Those who can, DO. Those who can't or won't, TEACH!) :-)

Rete Performance as done by Dr. Forgy:

Rete, the original version invented by Dr. Forgy for his Ph.D. Thesis, has been improved and optimized by almost every vendor in existence. But, so far, none have come close to
Rete 2: A dramatic improvement over other versions of Rete in terms of performance except for CLIPS (a C/C++ version in the original LISP language) that is as fast if not a wee bit faster than the Java Rete 2.
Rete 3: Rete 2 with some hooks for BMS tools such as Rules Power.
Rete NT: About 10 times faster than Rete 2 or Rete 3 if the customer forces the vendor to put it in their engine at the nominal price of $5K per CPU. Small price for 10X improvement, don't you think?

Well, stay healthy, keep the sunny side up and the dirty side down, and maybe we'll all meet at ORF 2011 in San Francisco. I promise to wear my Texas Flag Shirt for my talk so everyone knows that "I'm Southern by birth, Texan by the Grace of God." :-)

SDG

jco

Long Time Passing

2011-10-15T22:20:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

"Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing..." Old PP&M ballad. I've been locked out of the system for quite a while due to Google's password problems. But I'm back and I hope to see all of you at (October) Rules Fest, http://www.rulesfest.org - This should be the best one yet.

SDG

jco

Strength of Body and Mind and Soul

2011-05-02T21:11:00.002-05:00

Greetings, Programs:

Each of us has some kind of body: good, bad, beautiful, ugly, fat, skinny, wonderful, wobbly, whatever... The thing is that we, the little people of this world, these people, have defined what is good , what is bad, what is ugly, what is too skinny, etc. This is what we did to ourselves - nobody did it to us.

So, now what do we do with what we have? Me? I'm just an old (by the world's definitions) fat, white Jew boy from Texas who can't side kick higher than his waist any more. So what? I'm really, really happy so long as those around me are happy as well. My original goals have moved from

Electrical Enginer
Chemical Engineer
Lawyer
Writer
Poet
High-Speed motorcycle racer (1,000 cc and over)
Big-Bore Dirt Bike Racer (350cc and over)
USAF Fighter Pilot
Back to EE since the others didn't work out
MBA
Back to working on AI since my MBA co-students seemed full of chowder heads who just wanted a degree to to move up the corporate ladder
Rulebased Systems (since nobody needed anything in the AI theory fields)

So, now what? I'm getting old enough to need a back operation next week - hopefully that will allow me the flexibility to ride a bike again; maybe a Ducati 999 or a Harley Big-Bore??? Whatever.... Either would be cool. Especially with white, full-coverage fairing with a red Dragon that wrapped from handle to handle and feet that covered the light. Well, that probably won't happen again either but I can still dream.

But we still have to think of the combination of the parts of the Body (physical), Mind (mental), Soul (spiritual), and then throw in other attributes needed to be a fully developed human being;

Spirit (to keep the soul and mind in balance)
Body (to house everything)
Ambition (to avoid total stasis and avoid being a couch slug)
Partner-1 (I never WILL be gay, but I would like to think that each of us needs a partner to help unload our feelings and re-load our spirit.
Partner-2 (Ah, this is the sexual part. Someone with whom to share everything else and have two bodies become become one body. A joining such that nothing can tear it asunder.)

All of this and then maybe, just maybe, we can begin to look for happiness. The sexual partner usually fills most of the requirements, but not always. Above all, we have to be happy and remember that there really is an eternity - a place where time never stops. Our short, life-time, stop-over here is just to see where we might fit into eternity, how we might play our role to Almighty G-d. This takes only a few nano-seconds to see what we're going to do with the rest of eternity - the full lifetime.

Me? I think that happiness is fulfilling what Eternal G-d has called for me to do, whether sweeping up horsey-doo in a stable or being a CEO for a big faceless company. Doesn't matter - I have to remember that He is the one who controls the universe, who keeps the stars in alignment, who - while He is doing all of that - still has time (or at least takes the time) to have a chat with me every morning, noon and night. (For the Muslim it's five times but that's another subject and not meant for idle conversation.)

(And, no, I don't smoke pot, take drugs nor, for that matter, drink beer. An occasional 20-year-old Glen Livet Whisky (Scotch to Americans) once a month is about all.)

And, finally, remember, the guy(s) who just tried to screw you to the nearest cubicle supporter is just trying to "get ahead" and has has no idea of what constitutes true happiness. So, keep happy and keep smiling. (It'll make the others wonder what you're up to.) Life is WAY too short to be bugged by trivialities. And everything except for G-d is trivial.

Peace, Love and Joy to each and every one of you:

SDG

jco

To Blog or not to Blog

2011-04-30T13:20:00.003-05:00

Greetings, Programs: (from TRON - the original movie)

(Sorry, Bill, for stealing your words (in the title) from Hamlet.) You know, my last blog (please forgive me for taking so long since then) was back in January on the free-software-policy aspect of Drools. I was thinking of going to see "TRON" in 3D tonight but it's already off the movie screens. (I saw the original many years ago- before Star Wars - and was entranced with what Hollywood could imagine such things happening.) OK, off to the main subject:

If it is that you have a blog, I think that you should write at least once per month minimum to that said blog. Having two blogs is incredibly time consuming on that premise. So, I'm back to having only two rather than the three or four that I had before. So, with that done, let's move on to another subject: Yom HaShoah Week. (See? Sucked you right from one subject to another that has nothing at all to do with the other - and no apologies for such disgraceful journalistic behavior. Disgraceful.) Yom (meaning "day" in Hebrew), Ha (meaning "the" in Hebrew) and Shoah meaning "calamity or destruction" in Yiddish/Hebrew, is actually a hard-to-understand mixture of words in Hebrew that make sense to us. Yom HaShoah is the Day of The Rememberance of the Holocaust from only one perspective. "The Solution" was Adolph's (you haven't forgotten his last name already have you?) idea to get rid of the Jewish "problem" in Germany - and eventually the world - but just getting rid of them. Sometimes in movies it's called "The Ultimate Solution" but even the high-ranking German SS spoke of it in low tones because they KNEW that it was wrong. So, so wrong.

So, this week (today? After all, it it still Shabbos) find a DVD copy (Blue Ray is a waste of money - unless you have a great sound system - since almost everything is Black-and-white in the movie "Schindler's List." Made quite some time ago, it is historically accurate and is kept on the correct historical track by Steven Spielberg (J-Director), Thomas Kneally - Author and historian, Poldek Pfefferberg (Leopold Page) - Author and historian, and many more.

Sadly, it is justifiably rated "R": but mature children, especially Jewish children, should see a part of their heritage and their parents should explain most of the concepts before the movie. The F- word is used extensively and my explanation to my children was that this is a gross, un-educated word used by persons of small minds who can think of very little and these persons think that this makes them sound intellectual. Not good but it worked.

For more on this subject you might want to go see Shoah and other movies (a Google search should be sufficient.) Today, we still have our Holocausts, blood-lettings, and things of that nature, but none that can surpass the callousness as we look back as see the pure (real) killing of people simply because they are of an ethnic minority.

Questions: How did Hitler get away with this when 80 million Germans were watching?? Didn't anyone have a sense of smell any more? Couldn't anyone hear the screams? Yet, today (I went to Munich for six months) nobody was a Nazi and nobody had a relative who was a Nazi. Amazing - just amazing.

I hope that I haven't led you too far astray nor forced you to look (now, how could I do that?) at our own flawed humanity, our own callousness and uncaring attitude. If you want to see the same thing and the same attitude today, just drive through the homeless part of your own town, especially near the missions, see the little old women pushing ALL of their worldly belongings in a shopping cart (they can barely walk), watch as the drug thugs rob them of any thing of value. Dear G-d: Come back soon and rescue a perishing world where saving a puppy is looked upon as something of value (which it really, really is) while we let our own humanity, our own brothers, sisters, mothers, aunts, sons, uncles, grandfathers, etc suffer on the street EVERY DAY and watch as those who are actually willing to work passed by; rather they are allowed to starve to death with only one meal per day in the mission. (That's all that the Nazi prisoners got, remember? One meal per day.)

Better things next time,

SDG

jco

Mene Mene Tekel Ufarsin

2011-01-16T14:45:00.003-06:00

Greetings:

Mene, Mene Tekel Ufarsin. Bad translation of this would be "Measured, Measured again, Weighed in the balance and found Wanting." (From the book of Daniel if you are into that kind of thing) And that is the dreaded thing about being a geeky programmer - the fear of being thought of as falling behind - not that you ARE behind, but those around you just think that you are falling behind. I just read a blog from Mark Proctor and then the link by Richard Clayton. Just for giggles and grins, you really need to go out and read all of both articles (and maybe a couple of others from Clayton) to see what he means in the first two paragraphs on Proctor's blog.

However, one sticky-wicket point that I have found with Drools is that there is a perception that sometimse things change TOO quickly. Sure, maybe to some of the newer programmers it is way cool the way that Drools is constantly advancing - and, of course, so they think, everybody needs the changes NOW! But consider that they (the overworked, underpaid programming trolls who keep the wheels of IT turning a better bottom line for the overdressed and overpaid managers) can't keep up with all of the changes to Drools AND the changes to everything else AND be even half-way knowledgeable about any of them.

So, here is my personal opinion and, knowing that it won't be heeded, I'll give it anyway: Drools needs to slow down the releases to every six to 12 months such that each release has significant changes and bug fixes. (Probably the technical Red Hat releases of Red Hat Drools are that slow. Don't know because I don't deal with Red Hat folks in person.) I prefer every 12 months but, then, I'm a slow learner and tend to try and find potential problems rather than fixes for problems that I have in production. But look guys, try to wait at least every six to nine months for each new release! Not only would this give the programmer trolls time to catch BUT it would also give the Red Hat / Drools team(s) time to fix all of the bugs in the last release.

By constantly updating you force the programmers to keep up to date with the latest changes or get lost in the process when they miss something. A year or so ago Drools threw everything out at once (like, FIVE products) and most of them were half-baked and not really ready for prime time, especially the decision table / spreadsheet conversions. A few other things were there that were "fixed" with a few 24-48 hour debugging and testing cycles but some still aren't fixed and ready.

Being a guy who has to learn almost (dang near) everything in the rulebase space and really know what I'm talking about, I spend almost three months (OK, at least two months) on each product that I have to examine so that I can verify that the product will do what the manual says it will do. And when Drools kicks out five changes and then an update within a month and another update right behind that, well, it really takes the glow off the updates and keeps me working WAY too hard for what I get out of it. The other problem with Drools is the documentation doesn't keep track with the changes. They are always late and not terribly clear in some cases.

First Drools used CVS, then Maven, then Subversion, and now Git? All I want to do is control my source code - NOT learn a whole new SCCS language every few months! (FYI) I went from FORTRAN to BASIC (yes BASIC, but multi-user Unix Workstation BASIC), then C, then C++ then Java and now I'm off to Objective C, J2EE, C# and all the others. All this and being part DBA, SysAdmin of eight different variations of UNIX (AT&T Unix, Solaris, BSD, AIX, HP-UX, DEC Unix, SCO Xenix/Unix; and then comes Linux and all of its variations from various manufacturers like Red Hat and Novell).

Oh, and let's not leave out CORBA, COM/DCOM and the mess that all of that caused - MS just HAD to put out .NET to be competitive with Java. Now, put on top of that, 10 different BRMS/rulebased systems trying and scrambling to be concurrent with all of the aforementioned systems above and then the confluence of databases: Informix (absorbed by IBM), DB2, DBase, and the multi variations of OODB. Sorry, Charlie; one guy just can NOT learn all of these things in depth and be worth a flip at any of them. What was that old saying? "A Jack of all Trades and a Master of None." Maybe we need a product called "None" and we can all master it. :-)

So, what do we do? Personally, I chose to focus mostly on Rulebased systems; all 10 (and growing) of them. Then learn enough Java and J2EE to keep my head above water, return to C/C++/C# now and then to keep your chops and be somewhat conversant. Now I want to do CLIPS and Objective-C so I have to RE-read all of my books on that again just to catch up to where I left off and start it all over again.

BUT, fear not, dear reader - another blog will follow this to tell us what wossies we have become because we have to read another book or two. Personally, I blame it all on football, baseball, hockey, and, most of all, television laced with copius quantities of bad beer, chips and tacos. Unfortunately, time is totally linear for all of the humans involved and we just cannot use it like it is not going to end - it will end. And then, will you have finished all of your projects? Probably not. So, the answer, for now, is to do what you can for as long as you can and, hopefully, let history record that you did well and died well; or not. You won't be able to change it then.

SDG

jco

For Little Guys Everywhere

2011-01-02T03:11:00.006-06:00

Greetings:

I just finished watching the earlier-taped Rose Bowl. Whatever religion, or none, to which you adhere or profess, you have to admire Andy Dalton's (Offensive MVP) comments after the game and the pure spunk of Tank Carder (Defensive MVP) coming from a broken back earlier in life to win "The Granddaddy of Them ALL! The Rose Ball!!!". And that despite repeatedly falling down due to the short cleats on their shoes (and nobody thought to bring replacements because Nike had designed these shoes especially for this turf and this game) as well as referees who can't see Wisconsin obviously holding a TCU player or a TCU players head being ripped off since they are the upstarts from Fort Worth, Texas. I still think that the Mafia has bought out the referees in Basketball, Football (USA and European) for sure; and maybe baseball and hockey refs as well. It's gotten almost as bad as Pro Wrestling.

BTW, to the Wisconsin Badgers - you guys played a really great game and I don't know HOW those little bitty defensive guys from Fort Worth managed to hold your score down to 19 points. And JJ should be drafted tomorrow by The Vikings (my team). Maybe he, Andy Dalton and Tank Carder can all go the Vikings and start a new dynasty up there.

Maybe NOW the corrupt BCS will allow the little guys, the non-exempt teams, play in the bowl games and (maybe?) begin a REAL playoff system where everyone with a winning season of no more than two lost games gets a chance to compete for the national title. But, TCU is undefeated/untied this year!! To quote the head coach for Ohio State, "The Poor Sisters of Football" did the impossible. Maybe they will let TCU play the winner of the "national championship" game after the 7th? Naaaahhhhh - probably not.

TCU Horned Frogs, 21

Wisconsin Badgers, 19

(Blocked pass by Tank Carder on Wisconsin two-point conversion to a wide-open tight end with only 1 minute to play)

Finally, for those who don't know, the horned frog is actually a horny lizard that squirts blood from his eyes when cornered or upset. OK, that's my last blurt on sports this year (and maybe next year unless LSU wakes up) until the World Games and then only if certain teams get that far. (Being of that Norse heritage, my team for the Super Bowl would have been The Minnesota Vikings but.... ) Kind of funny though: A Norseman / Viking that hates snow?

SDG

jco

[Follow up after the 7th Championship game] Once again, the paid-off referees made sure that Auburn (and, remember, I'm an Alabama / Auburn fan from Sylacauga, Alabama) won. What a rip! Those guys shouldn't be allowed to referee a dog-fight managed by Michael Vick. But, four of my favorite teams are in the fight now: Green Bay (the only team owned by the city in which they play) versus another old-line favorite, Chicago Bears, and the Pittsburgh Steelers (where Terry Bradshaw - a Louisiana Tech boy - led them to FOUR super bowl championships) versus Broadway Joe's Jets. What a weekend that will be and regardless of who wins, I'm happy. The cowgirls might have chance next year if Monsigniour Gerald Jones will keep his long nose out of the coaching business and let the re-headed genius run the team.

SDG

jco

(again)

New Blog to Follow

2011-01-01T16:35:00.002-06:00

BTW, Yaakov got, well, let's just say, "Upset!" with the Word Press guys and came over here. Apparently the same guy who had the Yaakov.WordPress.Com has the same one over here and hasn't blogged since about 2006 - but he still has it. Sooo... Yaakov is at http://Yaakov2.BlogSpot.Com just like over there, except now he's with us at Google. Since he's just starting up you might want to check it out and just follow the blog. Usually it's on the TaNaKh (Pronounced Tah-Nahk', or Old Testament to the rest of the world) but sometimes he rants a bit about other problems, sometimes dealing with arcane bits of knowledge that are unknown to most of us.

He's worth following if only to broaden your horizons and provide fodder for discussions - he's quite old now, well, old to most of you. He's somewhere in his late 70's and will probably live to be 200 in Sweetwater, Texas. After all, wasn't Moishe about 120 when he toddled off to be alone with G-d? And they both live(d) in the same kind of dry, sandy, desert environment. I'm just jealous because I don't have the bollocks to follow him over there and get to heck away from this big screen that takes up six days of my life.

So, check it out and leave him a comment if you like. I have asked him to re-post all of his stuff on the Sabbath (or Shabbos to the Ashkenazi) that took him quite a bit of research and that was still incomplete over at WordPress. Maybe he'll re-post it here and then complete it. Kind of interesting if you've ever wondered what was the fuss about the Seventh Day thing - and I don't mean the Seventh Day Adventists.

SDG

jco

Study, study and more study (JSB)

2010-12-28T11:22:00.003-06:00

Greetings:

I have just written a rather lengthy blog on the woes and travails of the programmer trolls and mostly dealing with how hard are our lives. Then, leaving it for a while to incubate (as is my wont upon occasion) I continued my reading on "Bach" - a rather large compendium on the boy and the man, Johan Sebastian Bach (there were many Germans in his area named Bach), dealing in minute detail with his life, friends, studies and teachers. At just before the age of 15 he left his home in Thurengia (as well as Ohrdruf and Eisenach) and traveled 200 miles (mostly on foot) north with his close friend who was 18 years old (Georg Erdman) to Luneburg, a city much larger (10,000 residents) than his native home of the Bach family. This was also so that the could be close to the town of Hamburg that was home to the largest and most fabulous organs in the world at that time. His study at St. Michael's church was very prestigious and each class consisted of only 20 noblemen's sons as well as a few highly-gifted singers and musicians.

Students at this Ritter-Academie studied

theology
philosophy
classics
ethics
politics
history
mathematics
physics
French
riding
fencing
dancing

All designed to turn out a well-rounded person in a program in keeping with the civil, military and social obligations of the German aristocracy. The academic year began at Easter and, in addition to the normal classes, Johan Sebastian Bach also had to study (for the first two years at age 15):

Leonhard Hutter's Compendium locorum theologicorum (Wittenberg , 1610) - a reference work that required a didactic memorization of questions and answers of a complex nature
Chrstoph Reyher's Systema logicum (Gotha, 1691) who first volume (Prolegomena logica de natura logicae) focuses on the definitions of fundamental terms
Heinrich Tolle's Rhetorica Gottingensis (Gottingen, 1680) - a concise summary of Aristotelian rhetoric
Latin Classes included Virgil's Bucolica and Aeneid, Book IV and Cicero's De Catinlina.
Further classes in Latin and Greek
Monograph on Alexander the Great by Quitus Curtius Rufus
Cicero's De officiis
Selections from Cicero's Epistolae
Horace's Carmina
Kebes of Thebe (Cebetis Tabula)
Phocylides
Isocrates
Theoginis
German Hisory
Geography
German Poetry
Mathematics (advanced)
Physics (advanced)
Modern History
Modern Geography
Modern Physics

And ALL is this was the "core" of their studies. In order to pay for this schooling they were members of (lowly paid) choirs - usually four or five - and played various parties and gatherings. In addition, they studied fencing, dancing and Sebastian taught himself Italian. All of this is contained in "Johan Sebastian BACH, The Learned Musician" by Christophf Wolff, ISBN 978-0-393-32256-9 ot 0-393-32256-4, depending on which ISBN numbering system is being used by the vendor. My copy was published by W. W. Norton, New York / London. They were very, very busy little boys (young men) who slept very little and ate whatever they could find in the up-scale courts and parties.

All of this to apologize for my earlier complaints that we lowly programming trolls might be overworked. Perhaps we are not worked hard enough and we are raised in a society that values the family and social groups more than one's own work and career. Whatever... I'm much too old to change now but perhaps this might inspire some younger folks to study more and play less? :-)

SDG

jco

What is a Rule Repository?

2010-12-06T11:47:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

What is a Rule Repository? What does it do? Why have one? Believe it or not, I actually went out to everyone in the industry that I could think of who might have an opinion, searched the web, went to my old text books on rulebased systems and this is all I can come up with. My friends came up with everything from “Who needs it if you have CVS?” to “Absolutely Critical and 50 reasons why you need it.” (Don’t panic – I won’t give you those 50 reason why.) But, all in all, it’s quite a bit like doing ITIL (Information Infrastructure Information Library) and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture); some do it and are quite good at it and can show a HUGE benefit from even getting started. (See InfoWorld Article on ITIL, 10/23/06, page 23+) on how to get started on ITIL and the one on getting started on SOA.) Meanwhile, others just don’t understand it at all. And there’s everything in between. So, here goes. Generally speaking, a Rule Repository is much like a source code control system with some really cool enhancements. First – what are a few of the things that a source code control system like CVS or Clear Case should provide for you?

Life cycle management, from creation to retirement and store the retirement
Version control, from 0.0.0.0 to the latest pre-alpha
Audit trail. For Auditors and bookkeepers (The IT variant).
Who put what where, when did they put it there and the reason that they gave.
Check-out and check-in and privileges thereof

So, what should a Rule Repository give you other than that? Well, things like

Really, really fine-grained access management
Search for objects accessed during the last run of the rules
Search for objects not touched by the last run of the rules
Search for which rule fired the most on the last run
Search for which rule fired the most on the last ten or twenty runs of the rules,
Search for which rule never fired on the last run of the rules
Search for which rule never fired on the last ten or twenty runs of the rules
Search for which rule has NEVER fired
Search for which rules ALWAYS fire and how many times, average, for each one
Stepping through the rules with a debugger for each line in the rule (lots of overhead for this one) and this one is the trickiest of all
Tracking who put the rule into the system and why but more complex than CVS
Authorization for anyone to put rules into the system
And lots more…

Now why in the world would you need all of this (and more) clutter? Answer: Auditing for Sarbannes-Oxley, SOA, IT Auditing compliance, and, most of all, debugging of the system when something doesn’t go according to plan. If you’re using one of the "open systems", "free-ware" or "share-ware" versions like OPSJ, Jess or JBoss Rules you can always integrate the rules with the CVS or Clear Case. On the other hand, if you’re using the rich rule repositories of IBM/ILOG JRules or FICO Blaze Advisor then you will have laid the basic ground work for SOA, Sarbannes-Oxley or any other IT auditor who comes around. All you have to do is do it right the first time. Again, you might want to go read the article in InfoWorld and maybe something more recent.

SDG

jco

Multi-Dimensional Things

2010-11-07T01:19:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Chatting with Mark Proctor just now. He's about to get Drools running on Collection-Oriented, Parallelized Rete - or something like that. However, in the process of working on my forecasting, I'm thinking of the analysis board in "The Majority Report" or "NCIS LA" - but in 3D then in multiple dimensions. Design work by 2012 or 2015 (OK, maybe 2020) will be done by modeling in 3D or 4D using holographic (or some other technology) so that we can move objects around NOT with our hands but with our mind. Hand-movement is WAY too slow for what you can think. And the models will involve time, space and multi-dimensions and massively parallel inputs.

Think about it: Your body has probably a million or more inputs to your brain all running at one time. All in parallel. What I need is a decent tool for real parallel work, not a single processor or even 128 processors, but a few million processors like in the old days of DARPA. Each one doing just a single, simple task. But all in parallel and all controlled by a massive Parallel CPU that can processes a million inputs at once. Real intelligence, real active agents or real-world forecasting will require just such tools.

And it might not be computers as we know them today. I suspect that these will be chemical simulations of the brain or maybe even real brain matter that is trained (something like a neural net but not exactly) such that we can interact with them using our own central cortex in some simple way - maybe like the "Matrix" but that was way too weird to work for what I'm thinking about. Actually, I DO know that the military is working with real brain matter to train it as a "computer" of sorts. I've seen it myself so it isn't just rumour.

Well, the headaches are back. Off to bed. But keep thinking about how to REALLY advance our thought process to model what we're really thinking and doing it quickly and easily. DARPA, TI, HP, Apple, CYC - SOMEBODY has to come up with a solution right away that is not hardware-based junk that we are being forced to use today.

SDG

jco

No Magic Conference starts tomorrow (Sunday)

2010-11-07T01:15:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

The No Magic conference will begin tomorrow. It's called a World Conference and since they are working around the world I suppose that it's justified. John Zachman, Richard Soley (OMG), Lynn Meredith (Lockheed Fellow) and lots more. Check

http://www.umlconference.com/dfw/index.aspx

For more details. Cocktails tomorrow evening (this evening now) and the conference on Monday at 8:00. (Good Grief! Charley Brown! Nobody goes to a conference at 8:00 a.m. any more!) If I get to enough meetings I'll blog about it later. But, check out the site anyway.

SDG

jco

Rules Fest 2011 Day 3

2010-10-30T17:45:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

I wish I could tell you more about day three but the only one for which I have Notes was Christian de la Maria of IBM/ILOG talk on RIF. My only note there was "A rule is just another data item." I certainly hope that I got that one wrong ONLY because we have been teaching for so long that rules are the logic that are data driven. So if rules are data and data are data then the data are data driven? Naaahhhh... That's not what he meant. Maybe he'll blog and correct me on what I thought I heard.

Anyway, I had to leave early but, again, Michael Small gave Rolando and I a ride to the airport. What a guy. Now I owe him two drinks. :-) So, that's all the news that I have from "Camp Woebegone where the women are strong, the men are good looking and all of the children are above average." [ala, Prarie Home Companion]

SDG

jco

Rules Fest 2010 - Day 2 - Tuesday

2010-10-18T18:32:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

[First this is being written a full week after the events from my notes which may or may not be spot on.] Well, here are just some things that hit me on Tuesday - migraine was just setting in good. I always get one the second day after a long flight. Something to do with decompression + recompression of the neck joints.

1. Karen Myers: Work flow for the Masses. OK, that would have been my title. Mostly to do with data flow and work flow; something ALL of us need but not the thrust of the conference. And she talked WAY too fast for this slow, old cowboy from West Texas. :-)

2. Paul Vincent: Former FICO guy and one of the great Brits that I have had the privilege of meeting. (a) Paul defines "real time" as something like 5 minutes. I define real time as something on the order of nano-seconds or less. (b) Brief visit into parallelism and Fail Over Strategy that was pretty good. (c) Just a bit on Forecasting (my favorite part but not much about it) and then he ended up saying something about a "finite state machine." FYI, ALL computer programs are finite state machines. If you have the same program, same data, same OS, same everything, you should always get the same output from a finite state machine. QED.

3. James Taylor: (a) Another Brit but with a stronger accent. Being in the back of the room probably didn't help, but I could understand only about half of what the boy was saying. And I happen to like "Only Fools and Horses" [I have the entire collection on DVD] as well as most Brit-Coms - and some of those have some real Cockney accents. (b) One of his slides was "Decisions Matter more than rules do." Personally, I don't think that you have direct relationship there. If I said, "Data matters more than do rules." (better English, anyway) then it is says nothing. Data matters, decisions matter, process matters, rules matter. To me, a decision is the result of the action of the rules. (c) A couple of other quotes: "Execution is less important than management." I didn't understand the statement nor could I hear the explanation so I'll just let that one slide. (d) "What kills rules is not performance but mismanagement of the rules themselves." Again, one does not negate nor prove the other. Performance and mismanagement of rules are two different concepts. (e) "Data Depth can improve its Width." ??? Your guess is good as mine but maybe I'm just showing my ignorance on database here. (f) "You can't use the same rule on every transaction." OUCH! Yes you CAN! As a matter of fact, that's exactly what a rulebase is all about. Same rules for all transactions of the same type. (g) Then he went into some Champion / Challenger stuff that the boys from FICO Business Analytics would have liked. Overall, good stuff from a business point of view but not very technical.

4. Mark Proctor: Drools Evangelist Extraordanaire! I still have to struggle having with the concept of having only CE elements in a rule, which is called a query in drools. Somehow I think that a good rules debugger would flag that one as a Conditions without Actions flaw. Lots of code. Lots and lots and lots of code. Drools guys loved it because they speak Droolie. I speak Drools about like I speak French - poorly and not in public.

[Another great lunch break provided by JRules guys. Good lunch and good talk by Daniel Selman.]

5. Panel Discussion: OK, but still opinions are like certain parts of the human anatomy; we all have one and they all smell about the same.

6. Andrew Waterman: Missed the whole thing and this was one that I really, really wanted to see.

7. Hal Hildebrand: Distributed Systems. (a) "Failures are the norm." ??? There are times when failure is not an option. And we should NOT tolerate it but the rule sales guys can usually turn them around so that it must be the fault of the client. The client should NEVER stand still for a failure unless they failed to commit enough resources and money to make it happen.

8. David Holz: Good talk, lots of code.

9. Jason Morris: Another one that I missed. It was time for another lie down to get rid of the migraine. Someone else will have to report on that one.

[Tuesday supper with my Executive Editor at InfoWorld with some of the guys from Rules Fest who insisted on bringing their best friend and therefore some didn't get invited to that supper that should have been. Sorry, CAB. How about in December in San Francisco?]

SDG

jco

ORF 2011 and Its History

2010-10-14T12:19:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

First there was ORF 2008. The Three Amigos (myself, Rolando Hernandez and Greg Barton) were the instigators at the continued prodding of Mark Proctor of Drools fame. Rolo and I had our talks rejected by Business Rules Forum because they were too technical. So, we decided to start our very own conference for geeks and nerds. Pete Carapetyn helped in the beginning but dropped out because he just didn't want to tell vendors we might have 500 people. I used the term "might" because anything is possible.

I, on the other hand, really believed that if we set the price at $150 we would be swamped with applicants. (Didn't happen, BTW. We only had about 125 applicants and 30 speakers.) But it was lots of fun and I (it was my credit card after all) lost only about $1,000 on that venture. The speakers were some of the best (technically) in the world. FICO stepped in as a Diamond sponsor (God Bless Carole Ann!) and we made it.

ORF 2009: We raised the price to $500 not expecting the market to drop out the bottom. We moved the event to the finest hotel in Texas, the Adolphus (built by the Busch founder and hosted Queen Elizabeth in 1998) that was located right in the middle of all of the restaurants and only six blocks from Dealy Plaze where JFK was shot. FICO (Carole Ann again) and No Magic stepped up for Diamond sponsors but we had only 35 paying attendees. This one lost about $14K. But, once again, the speaker were the best and even improved over the year before.

ORF 2010: I had gone to work for a vendor so I couldn't do the conference and I handed it over to Jason Morris. Jason had the foresight to realize that he could lose his hind quarters so he set up a committee to help. Carole Ann left FICO so there went that sponsor. But, they got ILOG (IBM now) to replace FICO and only Gary Riley dropped out of the top speaker list from the year before. (His spousal unit was in the hospital for repair.) They dropped the October out of the name (buggers!) but the hotel was on the same level (quality wise) as The Adolphus. It's only drawback was that it was located in a sea of residential homes. The committee fell in love with the hotel and forgot that most people like to end the day, walk out of the hotel and wander around at various pubs and bars. On the other hand, the conference was a 100 with 10x bulls eyes. (If you're a target shooter you know what that means. If you're not a target shooter, you should be.)

ORF 2011: I would like to see it moved to San Francisco, Miami, or Nice in France. They probably won't but I'm just going to wait and see. BRF tried to have a BRF in Europe and they had to cancel for lack of attendees. Very, very embarrassing for all concerned. But, San Francisco or Miami? What do you guys think?

So, see you guys in (??) for Rules Fest 2011?

SDG

jco

ORF 2010 - Monday explanations

2010-10-12T02:09:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

A couple wanted to know why "diss" the speakers? Well, I don't know. Migraine, bad back, knees without padding between the bones... Whatever, I guess I just get tired of seeing blog after blog of happiness and wonderful accolades.

BUT! Overall, the conference is probably the only technical rulebase conference, top quality speakers, people who invented this stuff and people who are inventing more great stuff today. I learned a LOT and managed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time more than once.

If you didn't come, SHAME on you. If you did, pay no attention to the guy in the western hat sitting in the back. He's nuts! :-)

SDG

jco

ORF 2010 - Day 1 - Monday

2010-10-12T00:46:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

What a great day. Lots of fun and good food at lunch. Here's a play-by-play recap of some things that I noted today. Anyone who feels maligned, well, feel free to drop by and we'll share a Glen Livet and see why I say that.

Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon: (She's dropped the Berlioz these days and I kind of miss it.) She said, (1) "Don't expect business users to think like developers." Well, OK, but they actually can. And, not only that, they kind of HAVE to think like developers and developers have to learn how to think like business users. (2) "Business guys need Tables, Nets and Graphs." Again, not true - nobody HAS to think like anything because we're all different and we all think different so we can't assume that all business users think like that. QED. (3) "Again, focus on the Business Concepts and NOT the rules." Ouch. The rules ARE the business logic!" Business Concepts and rules are one and the same thing. BUT, the presentation was simply glorious - she's using some kind of really cool software that allows her to give really cool, really neat presentations. BTW, since she made probably 150 documented points and we only disagreed on three, that's pretty close.

Pete Voss: (1) "Animals do not do abstract thought." Actually, animals have been shown to be able to count, communicate and express tremendous feelings for each other and ever some for humans. I just have to give animals more credit. (2) "Neural Gas Architecture." I don't know what that is yet but I'll be working on Goole overtime tonight. Supposedly it's a Dynamic Architecture based on data. Sounds really cool. BTW, way back in the dark ages of Ge transistors and diodes we (the good old USAF) did VERY large-scale training projects. Sure, the computers took up several buildings, but we did them.

John Laird: Now this guy was at CMU with The Forgenator in the early day of AI and Rulebased systems; a true rule guru. He still insists that people need to remember where we started and the this is, after all, AI. Dammit! (OK, he didn't say, "Dammit" but should have.) He claims to be the first person to write a rulebase (a game that he invented in college) with over 1,000 rules.

Rolando Hernandez: Rolo pretty much showed WHY we need to keep knowledge from "leaking" out of the company but some pretty fair ideas on how to to do it.

George Williamson: Something about "Forecasting performance of games." Didn't quite catch all of that but maybe I'll pick it up on the slides later. (2) He commented about taking a line-by-line translation of a C program straight to Java and the problems that they had with it. Well, Duuuhhh.. NEVER translate a program line for line. Not even C to C++. (3) "Business Users cannot understand complex coded rules." Horse hockey! I've worked with business users who did it. They did it because they wanted to do and (maybe) because their jobs were on the line. (4) "You can't test all the rules." Again, well... I did that at Lloyds Bank because we HAD to have 100% verification because it was an on-line banking problem. 800 rules had 65K+ test cases but it had 100% verification. (5) "RBS is a nightmare to maintain from an IT point of view." NO! RBS helps relieve the nightmare if the business guys are writing and testing the rules, NOT the IT guys. Once you put the monkey on their backs, they will make sure that everything works and works right! I guess that traveling around and not staying on one job more than 18 months gives you a different view. (OK, now that's just bragging and promoting traveling consultants, isn't it??) But, I have to admire a guy who stays on for 12 years at one place and puts up with the constant internal politics and wins out - that's something I could never do. :-) Finally, (6) there was a comment about "not having the same time on each device in the USA" (mostly in Texas, I think) Again, back in 65-67 we (NASA) kept everything synched up while doing satellite tracking at lunar distances using WWV out of Ft. Collins, CO, located at 5, 10, 15... MHZ. Nothing more than time hack every second of 1KHz and maybe 10 cycles that we zeroed in every shift. I don't think I'm going to get a job with Union Pacific after this but it had to be said.

James Owen: (moi) Forecasting with Rules. OK, lots of chit chat and didn't hole the putt with the first stroke and the finish was anti-climatic. (Forgot a slide showing how the C code of a forecasting rulebase done in 1992 would look in OPSJ or Drools in 2010. So sue me!) And I was really tired and missed completing the job. So, now I need to go back and put all in the stuff that I left out. Maybe Jason will give me another chance for redemption next year.

Luke Voss: Missed it. One of my favorite speakers (just me him last year) and I had to go get new keys from the front desk to change shoes. Oh, well. Maybe he'll tell me about it later and explain the slides.

Panel Discussion. Well, I deserved that since I started it at ORF 2009 last year. I was kind of hoping that Jason wouldn't do that this year but we're doing it. And the attendees seem to like it. A couple of photos later.

SDG

jco

More tomorrow! Tune in.

CAB Blogs on Rules Fest 2010

2010-10-07T10:56:00.006-05:00

Greetings:

Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon (CAB) has set up a video (complete with barking dogs) at http://bit.ly/bh9txo - on her own blog site. CAB was formerly a VP of all of the products at Fair Isaac (FICO) and she is the very first speaker at the conference. She is extremely well versed in both rulebased systems as well as optimization and other products in our tiny little world.

Check out the video - she a lovely French lass whose English is so much better than my French but she still has a beautiful accent. (Forget it you plonkers! She's happily married!)

SDG

jco

What to do, what to do?

2010-10-01T12:04:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

[Warning: None of the below has anything whatsoever to do with rulebased systems nor AI.]

Right now in Texas, we have a slick-haired, pompadoured, Carpet Bagging Yankee Dixie-Dandy spending my tax dollars like it was free money and who is the incumbent Republican. The more mundane Democrat, (whom I happen to like) unfortunately, still favors abortion - something that is, or should be, an unforgivable offense to any true-believing Jew (comme moi), Christian or Moslem.

I can't vote for the Democrat. I refuse to vote for the crooked Republican. (This guy is so crooked that they are going to have to screw him into the ground when he dies.) (This guy is lower than a snake's belly in a wagon track.) (This guy would shame Elmer Gantry.) (This guy... well, you get the idea.)

So, what to do, what to do? What we need is a box that we can check that says "NONE OF THE ABOVE" and reject all of them so that we can get a new slate of candidates; maybe one that has morals and doesn't spend money like West-Texas dirt. (Can't say "water" in Texas - Water down here is WAY too precious.) All I can do is vote for neither one and go on with life. If I don't show up at the polls, then I don't get to vote in the next election unless I re-register again; a slow and arduous process that takes days to complete properly.

Somebody once said, "Every now and then a little (or big) revolution is necessary." Maybe it was Karl Marx. Or George Washington. Doesn't matter - sounds like a good idea to me.

SDG

jco

News on Education

2010-09-27T17:30:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Usually, I watch only two stations here in the DFW area for news: NBC Channel 5 and CBS Channel 11. On one of the local news casts today, on a story concerning the problems that educators face, those in the story and those reporting the story made the following errors (among many that I have now forgotten) in English:

"Dey wuz" [They WERE]

"... where dey wuz going to." [THEY WERE GOING. NO "to" is necessary.]

I quit listening after that and switched over to another channel. That was really embarrassing to hear supposedly educated newscasters and educators use such horrible English. After all, how can the comment on the poor education that "dem kids" are receiving when they themselves cannot properly use the language.

Perhaps ALL of them (educators and news casters alike) should return to class in another state, (say, California or Nebraska or a city like Boston or Chicago) and RE-train themselves in the English language. The way that the language is taught and spoken here in the DFW area is both alarming and depressing - at the same time.

I think that the biggest offenders here in DFW are the following:

mis-pronouncing words (Wuz for Was, Day for They, Dem for Them)
Ending a sentence in a verb or preposition
split infinitives
using an adjective for an adverb ("He done real good on the test." Even, "He did really good on the test." is not proper English. "He really did well on the test.") "He was driving bad." rather than "He was driving poorly." Adverbs are used to modify a verb and usually end in "ly". Just a guide.

I don't know which is the most common mistake - probably the pronunciation of words. Even NBC nightly news is guilty of really poor grammer and speech. Maybe that's why I listen to them; to prove to myself that even the "big boys and girls" make really common mistakes when excited or animated.

Please, at the Rules Fest, PLEASE allow an English grammarian to look over your presentation for obvious mistakes. Make the speech for them and have them correct your pronunciation of the words into what is sometimes referred to as "Nebraskan English" (if you are an American - USA) or "Posh English" (if you are European.) I doesn't matter how intelligent you are; if you don't speak properly in front of your peers they will think that you are not terribly bright.

Oh, and if I make a mistake, PLEASE correct me privately later. Remember, nobody is perfect - not even linguistic majors. (I have the evidence on file.) And, for some reason, when excited and speaking at a high rate of speed, I sometimes revert to old habits.

SDG

jco

Rete-NT Formally Announced

2010-09-20T17:11:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

OK, it's now official. See

http://www.infoworld.com/t/business-rule-management-systems/worlds-fastest-rules-engine-822?source=rss_developer_world

http://www.infoworld.com/t/business-rule-management-systems/worlds-fastest-rules-engine-822?page=0,1&source=rss_infoworld_blogs

for the InfoWorld articles on Rete-NT, the fastest rulebase on earth. The first is the Developer World article and the second is the InfoWorld Blog article. And, here's the really cool part; it's customer driven, everyone gets the same low-ball price ($5K / cpu / year) and any vendor that uses the Rete Algorithm in any form can add it to their engine with the help of Dr. Forgy. If the vendor doesn't want to hire Dr. Forgy, then they can hire whomever they like - but since millions of dineros will be depending on this, I think that I would want the inventor himself to oversee the integration of the Rete-NT into my product. Also, Rete-NT, like all of the PST products before, comes with it's own rulebase language called OPSJ - very similar to JRules and Drools language but a bit more powerful. BTW, the engine itself takes only 100K of RAM.

Dr. Forgy will be at Rules Fest 2010 in San Jose to answer any questions you might have but Rete-NT is proprietary to Production Systems Technology (PST). You might say that this is like the Borland Turbo-C/C++ when they charged only $50 for a better product than other vendors were selling for anywhere from $1,000 (M/S) to $5,000 (IBM) or something like that. That made the C/C++ IDE available to every college student in the world.

Think about it. A corporation could buy the Rete-NT for their servers and improve performance by 100 times or more in some cases, by only 10 times in the worst cases. When you are processing millions of transactions per minute (or even per second) you need the very fastest thing that you can get; and Rete-NT is it.

SDG

jco

ORC at Rules Fest 2010

2010-09-18T15:28:00.005-05:00

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR RULES FEST 2010 ATTENDEES

At 5:00 on Monday, Oct 11th, shortly after the final presentation for that day, The Royal and Ancient Order of the Red Cane will award Dr. Charles Forgy and Gary Riley lifetime and voting memberships in ORC (The Royal and Ancient Order of the Red Cane) for their continued contributions to rulebased systems and their refusal to believe that something can't be done - so they did it.

Gary Riley primarily will be awarded ORC membership because he is a pioneer of AI and rulebased systems (along with many others) and for his continued development of a C/C++ rulebased product (CLIPS) and up through and including version 6.3 which has been tested by independent laboratories and has an amazing performance on a par with Rete-2.

Dr. Forgy primarily will be awarded ORC membership for the development of the OPS language itself that upon which most rulebased languages were founded after that time as well as for for the development Rete (3,000 times faster than existing programs), Rete-2 (50 times faster than Rete) and Rete-NT (10 times faster than Rete-2).

Both will be lifetime memberships (both are over 40 so who knows how long that will be?) and both will be voting members on who will be future receipiants of ORF. Also, this will keep the ORF acronym alive for many years to come even though some members of myriad organizations and several vendors tried to kill it off. :-)

SDG
jco

Phinehas Ben Yaakov

2010-09-18T12:30:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

Phinehas Ben Yaakov (http://Phinehas2.blogspot.com) has taken over the blog of Yaakov2 (of Sweetwater, Texas) on WordPress. Phinehas 2 because Phinehas 1 was a compatriot of Moshe. Phinehas is a bit of a zealot and should make for some interesting reading. Yaakov is pushing 80 now and is still a brilliant mind but he has grown weary of idiots and G-d has allowed him a bit of "Rest in the West" before he joins his fathers. Enjoy...

SDG
jco

Rules Fest 2010 Conference - Sep 11th - 14th

2010-09-09T17:19:00.005-05:00

Greetings:

[The new organizers dropped the "October" part.] OK, if you haven't signed up yet, DO IT NOW!! http://www.rulesfest.org - and be sure and stay at the hotel so Jason doesn't lose his whatevers like yours truly.

If you live in the San Jose / San Francisco (Silly Valley) area, you have no reason NOT to come. Most of the geeks and nerds in the world live and work there so the location this year seemed like a good idea when they first came up with it. Still is. But, remember, space will be limited both at the hotel and the conference.

Great speakers, great friendships, and you get to meet all those guys and corner them with your most perplexing problems. Especially Mark Proctor and Jason Morris. :-)

SDG
jco

My Fair Lady

2010-08-11T15:53:00.006-05:00

Greetings:

Even in Texas, when you call a government office you have to press "1" to continue in English. Not only that, it's been years since I spoke with a recruiter who was not from Bombay or New Delhi. I am NOT a bigot. I am NOT an English Teacher. But it would be nice to talk with someone for once who spoke good (USA-type preferred) English, whether in person or over the telephone.

In very first part of the movie, "My Fair Lady", taken from Pygmalian, Professor Higgins laments the fact that the English don't teach their children how to speak - meaning how to speak proper English. And he is totally correct. During my first gig in London at Lloyds TSB Bank, there were at least 15 different accents on the 2nd floor alone. Throw out the obvious Irish, Scotch and Welsh brogues of various colors and renditions, and you still have three different accents from South Africa and another one from New Zeland, another from Australia and then you have the various accents (10 or 12) from in and around London itself. There's a Midland's accent, a Birmingham accent, and... Well, the list just goes on and on and on and... On the other hand, after a year, I could tell a person's heritage and background just by his or her speech pattern.

Meanwhile, in the colonies, the good old USA, the New Orleans accent sounds remarkably like the Bronx accent, there is a group in SW VA that sound like they are from South Georgia, the Cajun accent made Justin Wilson a multi-millionaire which he then gave to five or six different wives. WHY can't we get ONE common language for the English-speaking peoples of the world. English is the national language of Canada, all of the UK including Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zeland, India (north and south) and, to some degree, Pakistan. If we could get everyone else to go along with this, I might even try to drop my Texas Twan... if everyone else would go along. :-)

SDG
jco

BRF+ORF+W3C+OMG+RIF+???==XYX Alphabet Soup

2010-07-05T15:58:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

I was speaking with a friend today about (O)RF and what it meant to BRF and other communities of associated conferences. We kind-of decided that (O)RF is unique in its stated "By Developers, For Developers" slogan (It sounds silly now but it made sense then) but then they (the ORF directors) allowed EDM and BRF founders to state what they want ORF (it will always be ORF to me) to become or what they think it should become.

Perhaps Ron Ross was right; maybe there there should be a different track in BRF for CEP, another for EDM and, perhaps, another for the geeks and nerds who want rulebased systems (BRMS) to return to its AI roots. I think that had he been man enough to have called me first rather than having his "minior minions feel me out" on the subject, it might have been a single conference. Maybe. Maybe not.

In any event, BRF is what it is and ORF is what it is and quite possibly ne'er the twain shall meet on common ground. I am sincerely hoping that I can be there Monday, October 11th, (early Monday morning) and Monday night (late) in order to have a fireside chat with everyone about what we're doing today and where we're going. Personally, just one man's opinion, but I think that all of the conferences have become highly political and run not on logic but rather are emotion-fed engines that thrive on controversy. Thus has always been and thus shall always be. I really hope that I'm wrong and that rather that build walls for separate camps we might tear down the walls and use the stones to outline patches of carrots and beets and cabbages and leeks.

"May the sun join with a light, cool breeze at your back as you walk through life. May the road rise up to meet your feet and may there be no stumbling blocks along the way. May the Lord bless thee and keep thee. May the Lord find favor with thee and give thee peace. May the Lord hold you in the palm of his hand until we meet again." [An old Irish/Welsh/Scottish blessing taken from the Hebrew] Maybe, one day, we can live in peace and harmony and look for solutions rather than find errors in the ways of others. TTFN.

SDG

jco

Best In Open Source

2010-06-29T13:21:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

We (InfoWorld) are looking, once again, for the best of the best (creme-de-la-creme) of the Open Source community. Does NOT have to be in the rulebase space but anything that is absolutely beneficial (some might say crucial) to the business community (not developer community) that advances the cause of Open Source to the business world.

If you know of such an item, please add a comment (and I will get it) along with what it does, why it enhances the open source community, why it helps business users, etc. But putting it into a comment block, you can see what others think as well. If someone else has already mentioned it, please add a "me too" comment so that I can collate the number of votes for or against.

I must have this by the first part of August in order to collate for my editor so the he can colllate it in mid Aug from all of the other editors so that the OS award for various categories can be published later that month.

So, the quicker the response, the better. Thanks for any help that you guys can give.

SDG

jco

Waiting for the Call

2010-06-21T15:33:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Well, here I am after being laid off (down sized, re-org'ed, whatever) from FICO - again. A stint with Neuron Data back in '98 - '99, another stint with Fair Isaac from '06 - '08, and now another stint ending in 2010. I don't think that we (either of us) really want to do another stint - unless, of course, Carlos and Carole Ann return to the FICO fold and need someone with my peculiar set of talents. I really did enjoy working with those folks.

Am I angry with any of them? Bless G-d, NO! I have learned lots of lessons from each stint with ND/FairIsaac/FICO as well as with each job with ILOG/JRules, Jess, CLIPS, CLIPS/R2 and all of the others. Knowledge is wonderful thing and, used for good, is even more wonderful. Of all of my jobs/contracts the only time I got into trouble was for telling the truth - which, sooner or later, was to return to me 10-fold. I think that the highest compliment that I EVER got was not for how much I knew, how much I helped the product, nor anything else. One of my former supervisors told one of my co-workers that I could be trusted to always tell the truth, not necessarily what he/she wanted to hear. And that I could be trusted to do what I really thought was the right thing to do at the time.

Some of my mentors along the way have been (first of all) Dr. Charles Forgy as well as Don Tallo, Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon, Carlos Seranno Morales, Irwin Welker, Maarten Van Lier, Libor Lanyi and Philip Debras (ILOG guys at O2 in Munich), Henry Bowers (formerly PM with ILOG), MarkProctor (Drools), Dr. Ernest Friedman-Hill (Jess), Gary Riley (CLIPS) and many, many more. My mentors who helped so very much with my writing are Dr. Binshan Lin (LSU) for academic papers and Doug Dineley at InfoWorld (for commercial white paper articles.) Each and every one contributed to my growth in one way or another. I can NOT list out all of the co-workers who contributed to my overall knowledge except for maybe Richard Hill, Daniel Brookshier and Greg Barton who helped greatly with my Java growth that was much needed for working in any Java Rulebase.

So, if you guys know of someone who needs a really senior (dirty old man) consultant or a fairly half-fast Product Manager, give them my name and email (jco@kbsc.com) and I would love to hit the books again. Just finished the last part of my Pragmatic Marketing (for a Product Manager?) course and I learned quite a bit from it. I would HIGHLY recommend it for anyone in marketing, product management and especially for each and every sales person in your company.

Maybe I can go back to doing evaluations for InfoWorld again. Doug? Are you there? I hate to admit it, but Doug and I were pretty much responsible for making the term BRMS an industry acronym that became synonymous with rulebase, which it isn't, of course, but we did that dirty deed and now we have to stay with it. Regardless, there is still much ground to cover and the game is still afoot.

Thanks for listening,

SDG

jco

Never Forget!

2010-05-29T18:55:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Lots of things should be forgotten, otherwise we could not continue as human beings but would end up a mindless heap quivering in the corner of a darkened room. However, some bad things we should not forget. Days like September 11, 1939: Germany invades Poland and WW II begins. September 7, 1941: Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. June 6, 1944: D-Day when the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy and the word Omaha became more than just black marks on pieces of paper. The USA lost more than 3,000 men on that one beach from V Corps alone. All total, the allies lost 120,00+ men at Normandy.

So, Next Week, on the 6th of June, Sunday Morning, remember D-Day and the sacrifices made by the ordinary men who wore USA and USN uniforms in order to keep your freedom, your way of life.

SDG

jco

October Rules Fest - Looking Back and Forth

2010-05-29T18:24:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

In some recent emails I have been asked why I don't want to "give back to the community" the things from ORF 2008 and ORF 2009 that have not (yet) been made public. Some of contents from some of those emails made it to public light. I feel that what I said in personal emails should have been just that; personal. But! Now that the dirty laundry is out in the open, as it were, I will make the following comments and then fade away into the wispy mist of the yesteryears of happy memories.

It was my pleasure to have devoted a great deal of time to ORF 2008 and ORF 2009 to try and see if the Geeks and Nerds of this world could make a conference happen that was focused on technology of rulebased systems, not the commercial side so much as on the theory and science of the AI aspect of the industry. In the process I lost $15,000+ (at a time when I had very little personal income) and I know that Rolando Hernandez lost a few thousand in 2008.

ORF ( http://www.OctoberRulesFest.org ) could not have happened without four things converging together as though they were concentric circles of foretold happenstance;

(1) Attendance from the technophiles of the world who longed for a place in the sun. Would that we had had more who could have attended but we didn't. Nor did we have a PR machine to tell anyone about them - just a ground swell of pent-up demand from geeks longing to tell their own story and listen to the stories of others from around the world. Some even paid their own way just to be part of what one attendee called "The Woodstock of Rulebase."

(2) Financial Sponsorship from a few big vendors; in particular Fair Isaac (now FICO, for whom I have been working again since January of this year) but also Third Pillar, No Magic, Visual Rules, BizRules and Production Systems Technologies. Even with their help, we still lost money. But they made the financial part happen.

(3) Extraordinary Unpaid Help - ORF 2008: Greg Barton, Rolando Hernandez, Pete Charpentier and a few others. ORF 2009: Greg Barton and Chelanie Israel. (True, Chelanie was a paid employee but she gave us a ridiculous rate for her services.) And Greg Barton was my strong right arm both years even though he didn't have as much spare time the second year. Finally, Mark Proctor who evangelized ORF and brought about half of Europe with him both years.

(4) Finally, The Speakers: Who paid their own way, paid for their own rooms and took the time to prepare for the conference. There are WAY too many to list but the headliners were, of course, Dr. Charles Forgy (Inventor of Rete, Rete 2, ReteNG) Gary Riley,(Inventor of CLIPS) John Zachman, (GodFather of EDM) Thomas Cooper (Early research on OPS5 at CMU), Carlos Seranno-Morales (Inventor of Advisor), Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon, (EDM Evangelist and co-developer with Carlos), Dr. Richard Hicks (Texas A&M), Paul Vincent, (TIBCO) Daniel Selman (ILOG) and many, many others including several local university professors; Dr. Leon Kappelman (UNT), Dr. Daniel Levine (UTA) and Dr. Gopal Gupta (UTD). ORF is truly indebted to them, one and all.

These were the four pillars that held up the tableau that was ORF. Actually, to have made money from such a wonderful adventure would have seemed both crass in nature and purile in practice. So, having inadvertently lost money, I can truly say that I did it for the love of the art and science of AI and I wouldn't have anyone take that feeling away from me. Unfortunately, I feel that AI today is drifting into pure commercialism without the three things that will make it a wonderful thing: (1) The mainstay of R&D by the major companies and government, (2) one's own personal love of adventure and (3) the practitioner's search for perfection of artistry.

To the organizers of Rules Fest 2010 in San Jose this year: Keep the faith and fight the good fight. I really hope to see you there. For those who don't know about Rules Fest 2010, see http://www.rulesfest.org for more information and to sign up.

SDG

jco

CoFounder ORF-2008/ORF-2009

(October) Rules Fest 2010

2010-05-03T19:32:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

One more time: (October) Rules Fest will be October 11th - October 13th and all details can be found at http://www.rulesfest.org now managed and maintained by Jason Morris of Morris Technical Services. So far, no list of speakers BUT there is a call for papers. So, if you feel that you would like to write something technical in one of five categories then write up a synopsis and send it in. Charles Young is collecting all of them and somewhere there is a group of guys who will determine who can speak and if that subject fits that category or should be moved or whatever.

In the past, we've had a lot of fun. Not that the Rules Fest is in Silicon Valley, it should draw LOTS more technical attendees and speakers. That was always the problem with holding ORF in Dallas; most of the techies were in California or North Carolina. So, with a bit of help from Michael Small (FICO - Chicago) the guys found a really nice hotel in San Jose to have the conference with a nice main conference room and some breakout rooms. Exactly what will happen and exactly WHO will be there will be posted as it happens. Hopefully the site will allow an RSS feed so that you can automagically track what's happening, including Tweets.

SDG

jco

Rules Fest in San Jose

2010-04-28T13:07:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

OK, it seems to be on-track now with Jason Morris taking over as the head honcho for Rules Fest, formerly known as October Rules Fest. The old page of http://www.octoberrulesfest.org is still there but the new page will be simply http://www.rulesfest.org and Jason should have it up later this week. Charles Young should have the list of speakers out later this month (or next month) as well. Hopefully.

Email jason.c.morris@gmail.com and get all of the details, latest news, etc. The conference will be October 11th - 13th at the Dolce Hotel in San Jose. As I understand it, the room rates are $139 per night (plus tax) including a breakfast and coffee/tea during the day while at the conference. Per Jason, the price for the conference is $399 for all three days and that includes lunch. Bootcamps are extra and prices are set by the various vendors and presenters. Check in later with the site for confirmation when Jason gets it finished.

Looking forward to seeing all of the attendees from the past couple of years (ORF 2008 and ORF 2009) plus lots of other developers (geeks) from Silicon Valley.

SDG

jco

[Edited and changed on 29 March 2010]

FICO World 2010

2010-04-06T09:06:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Well, it's finally here next week. FICO World (formerly called InterACT) is here and will be in Miami, FL, this year. You can get all of the details at

http://www.fico.com/en/Company/Events/FICO-World/Pages/default.aspx

where you can register, follow on twitter, follow on Linked-In, just about anything. The big thing for me (as a PM for FICO Blaze Advisor) is that we will be showing off the latest version of Blaze Advisor 6.9. The RMA (Rule Maintenance Application across the net) has been really improved. The appearance, the functionality, the ease of use have all been improved and there are many other smaller upgrades that just makes it easier to use. Don Griest (and some other folks from FICO) will be there to show off Blaze Advisor 6.9 and many, many other decision management tools that FICO has to offer.

Remember, as with IBM - or ILOG - the rulebase is a small part of a huge enterprise effort. Carlos Seranno-Morales did an excellent job of pointing this out at ORF 2008 in his second presentation if you can still find the copy on the net. And that is the main difference between a BRMS (Business Rules Management System) and a rulebase. A rulebase is the heart and soul of the logic while the BRMS is ability to work within an enterprise system of business analytics, forecasting, scoring, etc. - all nicely bound together AND, normally, a BRMS will easily interface with SAP and other 3rd party tools to make life easier for everyone. A standalone rulebase, however, is nice for getting started and for working in other environments than just the pure business world.

Have fun and enjoy Miami.

SDG

jco

Product Management

2010-03-25T16:02:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

So, as most of you know, I have recently accepted the position of Product Manager for FICO. Whoopee! But, what I'm wondering is this: What exactly does a PM do for a company? Managing a product is like (but not like) managing people; the big difference is that you have to determine the path of a product so that people WANT to use your product and enjoy using it.

Much as the iPhone was more than just a phone, had Apple followed conventional wisdom they would have just improved on the many cellular phones that were already on the market. They didn't do that. They invented a whole new product and culture - one that could accept additions gracefully, upgrade easily and something that people (especially their target audience) totally enjoyed having. And, as a side benefit, it was a bit of a status symbol. Their only stumble along the way was tieing it so closely to an old-fashioned, slowly changing company; AT&T. To their credit, they still control the add-on market so that you don't get garbage for add-ons, whether free or $20. Developers hate the control but the public loves that what they get will work.

That being said, back to being a PM. I think that what I need is to find out what people, the users, really want. Not feedback from salesmen and consultants who leave out the warts and pimples so that the feedback is pretty and acceptable, but things that will, in the long-run, make the product something that everyone WANTS to use in their daily work. Not just financial people and stock marketeers, but the ordinary joe, the engineers, psychologists, chemists, doctors, warehouse managers, etc. Something that they can "show off" to their friends and neighbors as the latest and greatest thing in the industry. Something really cool.

The problem is that I don't know, at this point, what that magical combination of attributes and benefits would be. I've been chatting with the OMG people all week and they either don't know anything about a rulebase OR they know all about LISP and OPS5. I'm moving from group to group to hear what each one needs and there isn't one yet that could not use a rulebase of some kind to work out their problems and express them in a declarative manner rather than the monotonic, procedural manner and process that they have always used in the past in conjunction with IT.

OK, enough on that. Next blog will be a return to conflict resolution in rulebased systems. Promise. :-)

SDG
jco

Snow in Texas

2010-03-20T20:44:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

More snow in Texas as I pack up to head out tomorrow - maybe it will move on out tonight. Doesn't matter, really. I can always head out the next day. What's on the agenda for OMG/PRR this year? Actually, we should be trying to define (1) what is a rulebase engine, (2) what is forward and backward chaining (and the various combinations), (3) is conflict resolution absolutely necessary, (4) how can people who have never worked with the engine itself actually set standards for the rest of the world to follow?

The last one is easily answered: They have the money and you don't. So, they get to set the standards by sending someone, anyone, to the conference to represent the company to try and set their idea of these things as standards for the rest of the world to follow. 'Twas always thus and thus 'twill always be.

New rumour: PegaSystems bought Chordiant, a really neat little business flow management company (more of a CRM actually), for a paltry $161M. That puts Tata consultancy and CitiBank in partnership with Pega as well as Chordiant now. Pretty soon there will be one big company (probably IBM or Oracle) that will own everything and nothing will work properly because everyone is trying to get their stuff to be he "standard" by which all others will have to follow. Something like PRR at OMG. (See? You knew that I would bring everything full circle eventually, now didn't you?)

SDG

jco

Conflict Resolution in Rules - Part 1

2010-02-28T17:22:00.008-06:00

Greetings:

One more time - and this will be the first part of several editions on the subject. Later blogs will consider the details of the various Conflict Resolutions (CR) systems, when to use which one, and why each one is important. So, since CR has been such a critical part of a rulebased systems in the past, why is it that most rulebased systems being written and used today use either priority (salience) or the order of the rules as they were entered into the system to resolve conflict resolution? The answer is simple: It's easier to code the engine that way. Only a few (4 at last count) of today's rulebase engines still allow you to have a system that can allow you to depend on a true conflict resolution. Dr. Forgy discussed this with John McDermott way back in the 1980's in an article ("Production System Conflict Resolution Strategies; Pattern-Directed Inference Systems") that emphasized the importance of CR. Later, they wrote that MEA (Means-Ends-Analysis) was a slightly better system of CR than was LEX (Lexicographical) and WHY we can not use conflict resolution as a center of intelligence. It's a way to think about rules and how they should be enforced, not the rules themselves.

So why have most vendors moved away from MEA? Ease of programming AND because most Java programmers who are pretending to be rulebased consultants or engine programmers have no understanding of CR nor its importance to rules in general. So, why IS CR so blooming important? Aren't the rules just put into a big bucket enough to do the job? Two-part answer: (1) For a small job with less than a few thousand rules, you probably won't see any difference; usually because the "architect" has been able to arrange the rules and objects such that the CR has little or not effect on the performance nor the answer. (2) However, for a large project (10K rules or more along with several thousand objects) the process of "thinking" about the rules becomes paramount.

Think of it this way: If your rulebase is concerned with only one project, one problem (an insurance policy approval comes to mind) then all of the rules are, for all practical purposes, focused on solving a single problem. However, what if you have to think about a lot of things at one time, much like the human mind has to deal with many problems at one time and all of them in different time slots and conflicting time slots and many shades of priorities? Conflict Resolution is best discussed in some of the text books listed at http://www.kbsc.com/aiBooks.html because the academics (and this is NOT a derogatory term) don't have to support the idea of CR when actually writing a rulebased engine.

Here is a proposition: If you are using priority of the rules ONLY as the method of CR, then you may as well write the system in straight-up Java. It would, after all, be far easier to understand, to write and to put into operation. If you are using the order of entry as the means of resolving the CR, then why NOT just use a straight-up CASE statement or a huge IF-THEN system of Java clauses. After all, isn't that the kind of technique that is being taught in most rulebased classes?

Ah, because both the CASE statement nor the IF-THEN clause are monotonic - meaning that you can go through the rules one time and then quit. But, really now; implementing nonmonotonicity in either clause is just a matter of bookkeeping a huge WHILE clause (or maybe several while clauses) of some kind. So then, again, why use CR to resolve which rule to fire next?

The answer is that we are trying to insert some kind of intelligence into the system. CR of rules in the human brain is one of its distinguishing features in comparison to computers. Most of the CR in the human brain is done through the neural network of the brain and is not a cut-and-dried process as you might think at first. When we lose the ability to directly affect the thought process of the brain, we become stumbling idiots incapable of the simplest tasks. When we refuse to us CR for rules, we move from an intelligent rulebase to an idiot rulebase. It has been shown that as we remove the CR from the rules we do two things: (1) We make them far more fragile and (2) we make rule maintenance a nightmare.

Please, Rulebase Designers: Stop and think. Push back to the project manager who says that CR is not important because your competitor has dropped it and nobody noticed it. (Which might be true.) But, unfortunately, if the developers at that company did notice, there probably is very little that they could do other than complain and since the developers are not the ones who pay the bills, they wouldn't be noticed back at the vendor level. But what leaving CR out of the rulebase mix has done is to move us further and further away from what was, at one time, one of the defining factors of intelligent rules and a step up from the straight up IF-THEN rules of COBOL, C, C++ and/or Java.

Yes, I know that someone who actually lived back then will say that the only reason that they did this was to increase performance. Well, partially, that's true. BUT, that is not the main reason.

Next time: What is MEA and LEX and how do they differ both from each other and from common paradigms of CR. Thanks for listening...

SDG

jco

Warm Sunday Afternoons

2010-02-28T13:34:00.004-06:00

Greetings:

Imagine for a moment that it's a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon in a city other than home. Your're sitting here in a strange hotel room trying to think of what you should have ready for tomorrow and for the all-day meetings all of next week on various topics, sub-topics and sub-sub-topics that will, eventually, decide what your product and your fate will become for the next few years. On the one hand, it's exciting, exhilarating and makes you feel more alive than anything else. On the other, there's the fear and dread of failure to live up to what you think you can do, what others think you can do to keep your established place in the market place and, if possible, to improve it; whether by leaps and bounds or even just bit by bit.

So, try as you might, you seek to think creatively without being obviously silly and, as my musician son would put it, without being "cheesy"; without so obviously trying to grab the attention of the market place with cheap tricks and shallow reasoning. Whatever you do it simply has to be solid and something that the market place needs and can't do without. It has to be something that is substantial and which, at the same time, won't create too radical a change in the way things are being done presently otherwise you will have a completely new product.

So, here we go - I'm asking for your help: What do you think that the "market place" of rulebased systems needs most? What is it that we can do for a product that it needs to be an even better product than it is today? Let's assume that you already have the finest Product Managers in the business, some of the most talented developers (engineers) that any company could want, and the God Father of Rulebased Systems himself as the chief scientists working on the problems and design analysis. With all of that, why would you have to ask for more help? Because it is the technical public, the business analysts, the USERS of the systems who can help a company define what a rulebased system should be and what it should and should not do.

[Back to first person] From our Ivory Towers, we can not predict what will be a "hit" and what will be a "miss" in this business. We have to get down in the trenches where those who work with our product or any other product day after day and find out what they want and, even more importantly, why they want it. It isn't enough to have one or more users to say that they want an engine that will solve a particular problem in a certain manner and give the appropriate answers, we have to know WHY that problem should be on the immediate need list and HOW that solution will make business easier for users.

Please feel free to either comment or contact me directly.

SDG

jco

Why Should I Care About Un-enforced Standards?

2010-02-26T14:50:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

During these days of smaller and smaller budgets, way too many times, vendors, especially the smaller vendors, don't care about standards unless they directly affect sales today or next month. OK, maybe if they affect sales this year. But, here's the problem: Belonging to a standards committee is, many times, a defensive measure (to keep your product from being written out of the standards) or an overt attempt to directly influence the committee into accepting that YOUR standards as the only (or maybe just one of two) standard. A third, and unusually rare problem, is that the vendor is seen as doing one of the above when, all the time, their intentions are totally altruistic and in the interest of the industry as a whole - meaning that they are one of the "good guys".

And that is what we should be doing: Writing standards that help our industry to establish definitions so that we can have a common language so that when we talk with customers we can say that we adhere to standard XYZ and the customer know that when they say "blatherskater" it has the same meaning to both of us as well as any competitor that adheres to that standard.

But what if we adhere to our industry standards, what if we are concerned about our industry and we (all of us) are trying our best to be sure that we all agree on standards. Now, what if one of us should fail to adhere to one of those standards and produce a product that claims to adhere to that standard and the product does not adhere to that standard. What happens then? If there is no governing body to reinforce some kind of sanction, the standard is valueless. If the standards are not enforced by a governing body that can enforce some kind of economic sanction, or even a legal sanction, when there are violations of those accepted industry standards, then the standards have no value.

Back to the original question: Why should I care if they are not being enforced? Because we, all of us, have a duty and an obligation (especially the "Thought Leaders" such as FICO and IBM) to "do the right thing" even when no one is looking nor checking. The servant of the most value to the master is the one who does what is right and proper even when the master will never know nor find out. That is what is known as a "trusted servant." And we, the leaders of the industry, must do what is right and proper with respect to standards and ethics even when we know that we don't have to those things and that there is no retribution when we get caught doing the wrong thing. We, the "thought leaders" of our various industries, must be "Trusted Servants" of the industry.

All that being said, we MUST follow our own standards upon which we all will have agreed even when it means that we will take some kind of financial hit. The hardest thing of all is combating the argument, "But if we do this thing (that we know is wrong) it will cost us more money and if we don't do it no one will find out and even if they do find out, so WHAT? There's nothing that they can do about it." (Yes, I worked in sales for a year or so and heard all of that kind of thing.)

Hopefully, this won't be my last blog on this subject. Maybe next time I'll go after JSR-94 and what it means to have a standard that can be observed but means absolutely nothing to anyone whether you adhere to it or not. Maybe...

SDG

jco

Blaze Advisor

2010-02-25T17:37:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

Well, we're all working our tails off over here trying to get Blaze Advisor 6.9 out the door this quarter (more exact dates will come later) and start ramping up for Blaze Advisor 7.0 I've seen the new and improved 6.9 and it looks really good. For starters, the GUI part has been improved and a lot lof the suggestions from the users have been incororated into it. Advisor 7.0 will be even better, but 6.9 still has a LOT of really good stuff coming out.

I did work with Yaakov at KBSC to do some benchmarks for a client the other day to see how many trivial rows of a five column Decision Table we could put into a BA 6.8 Decision Table using Vista 64-bit O/S, 12GB of RAM and Java 6 JDK 64-bit. A lot of stuff was running in the background but still it installed and compiled a single table with 250,000+ rows. A single table (NOT the sane way to design a table) but someone had asked the question so we decided to just see what we could do. Certainly I hope that no one ever tries to do this in real life but at least we know what can be done.

Which brings up the question of proper rulebase architecture, something often forgotten. Just as you would not ask a beginner to design you database (you would get a certified DBA) then, in the same line of logic, you need a real RuleBase Architect to design and help maintain an enterprise rulebase. Going to a one-week (or three week) school certainly will get you started, but you need a professional if you have more the, say, 2K or 3K rules and you're running with a commercial database and a commercial server and any commercial anything. You MUST have the right person for the big jobs, and usuall that's one of the vendor's guys from the plant who has the contacts to reach out and touch for help in really sticky problems.

Well, enough for now. Check back later and I'll try to have more goodies for you. OR, a better idea, just sign up for the RSS feed and read them whenever they are posted.

SDG
jco

Collaboration and Participation

2010-02-15T13:23:00.002-06:00

Rules Fest 2010 Conference - Feb 15th

2010-02-15T09:32:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

Jason Morris is the leader of the new and improved Rules Fest 2010 - formerly known as October Rules Fest. This is known as REALLY short notice but I've blogged almost everywhere else and forgotten this one. The conference begins at 10:00 CST, 2:00 p.m. London time, 3:00 p.m. Paris and Munich, 8:00 a.m. in San Francisco.

Just go out to http://www.dimdim.com and register for the jcmorris-mts conference.

SDG

jco

October Rules Fest 2010 Update

2010-02-01T12:03:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

FYI - Because I took a job with a vendor (FICO, the #1 Rulebase/BRMS in the world) as a Product Manager, Jason Morris of Morris Technical Services is now the Honcho of ORF. His # 2 guy (for now) is Mark Proctor and I think # 3 is either Rolando Hernandez or Jacob Feldman.

AND, the name might change - stay tuned for further developments. Film at 11. :-)

Seriously, Jason is going to need lots and lots of help; both time and money, from anyone who wants to be part of the group. Those of us who are vendors can help but I don't think that we should have an "official" position in the group. And, furthermore, if you want to be a REAL part of the group, then you will become a partner of the group, meaning that if the event loses money you lose money, if it makes money you make money. Vendor employees would be greatly encouraged to become partners. Perhaps there would be a partner list:

Diamond Partner: $10K / annum

Platinum Partner: $5K / annum

Gold Partner: $2K / annum

Partner: $1K / annum

And the partners could be listed on the web page itself. This would be similar to Art Groups where some of the more financially-gifted persons would be able to help in a more substantial way. Partners could be individuals or companies. There might even be certain benefits to being higher-level partners. That's for Jason to figure out, not me.

However, it has been a GREAT run for the past three years. Truly, I have enjoyed it and I would like to mention those who have made it possible - and I know I will leave someone out:

Dr. Charles Forgy and Gary Riley: These two gave the conference the credibility that made everything else possible.
Greg Barton (my strong right arm and without whom ORF would NOT have been possible.)
Rolando Hernandez (2008 would not have happened without him and Ile doing the web pages and the brochures.)
Pete Carapetyn for helping get the 2008 conference off the ground.
Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon, formerly of FICO / Fair Isaac and now an independent consultant. She devoted time and energy and, most importantly, lots and lots of money (Diamond Sponsor both years) to the event. Without her, well, we would have been way, WAY in the hole.
Carlos Seranno-Morales, also formerly of FICO / Fair Isaac and now an independent consultant. His support came in the way of money (YES!) and a couple of really great presentations.
David Kim of Visual Rules, 2008 Gold Sponsor.
Mark Proctor, Edson Tirelli, Chris Verlaelen and others from Drools in both 2008 and 2009. Their Drools boot camps (both years) accounted for almost 25% of the attendees and almost all of the European attendees.
Academic Speaker such as Dr. Leon Kappelman (University of North Texas), Dr. Gopal Gupta (University of Texas at Dallas) and Dr. Daniel Levine (University of Texas at Arlington). For the 2010 conference (by whatever name) I'm hoping that Jason will get them to play an even greater part in the conference but already they are the academic foundation of ORF.
Larry Terrill who laid out the foundation of the Rete Algorithm for all beginners in a way that managers, students, academics, ANYONE could understand. Totally fantastic job!
Daniel Selman of ILOG who gave a great presentation in 2008 and, even after the conference, helped financially to make up some of the losses. Who else would contribute to a conference as a sponsor AFTER the conference was over???? What a guy!!
Dr. Rick Hicks (Texas A&M) who keeps reminding us of the Validation and Verification process for ANY rulebased process. I, for one, certainly hope that he returns every year to keep reminding us of the hazards and pitfalls of any technical project.
Thomas Cooper (Distinguished Guest 2009) and one of the God Fathers of Rulebased Systems for his enlightening talks and insightful questions. His presence at the Pub Nights was a blessing as well.
Paul Vincent (Tibco), Edson Tirelli (Drools), Charles Young (Solid Soft) and Adam Mollenkopf (FedEx) for their insights into Complex Event Processing. Hopefully 2010 will have even more on this subject.
David Holtz and Luke Voss for reminding us of our AI heritage and bringing the conference back home whenever we tended to stray from our roots. Both guys are scary brilliant and I hope that they return each and every year.
Finally, the ground rod of the group, Jason Morris, who started the Jess Boot Camp last year and has agreed to pick up the reins and make sure that ORF will always be the real conference BY developers and FOR developers.

Thanks to all of you and I know that I left someone out - probably several someones. :-) Regardless, it's been a great run, lots of fun, and I will be back next time as a speaker. So, if you can find it in your heart to contribute just $1K toward the next conference, I urge you to contact Jason and make your contribution. We, the developers, the geeks, the trolls under the bridge that keep the wheels of progress turning, should be able to make this happen each and every year. Please help Jason get this together and make 2010 even better and bigger than 2008 or 2009 ever dared to hope to be.

SDG

jco

Dallas Rules Group - 2010

2010-01-24T15:07:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

As some of you just learned, I will be working with FICO Product Management full time beginning on Monday, 25 Jan 2010. BUT, I still hope to lead (or co-lead) the Dallas Rules Group (DRG) now that the DRG has returned to its roots of being a local group of rulebase developers. Greg Barton (Southwest Airlines Rule Architect) has agreed to co-host and help lead the group with various kinds of projects.

Now, understand, this could be BRMS (Business Rules Management System) or it might be any other kind of rulebase that is used for forecasting, scheduling, configuration management, diagnosis, homeland security, airport/bus/train security or solving any truly complex problem that might have insufficient data and insufficient knowledge and then reporting on probable results.

So, beginning on the 2nd Tuesday of each month, we will convene (for now) at IBM in Dallas. Later, we might move to either the Sun Location or the Improving Enterprises location on North Dallas Tollway. What I would hope for in addition to DRG would be an Austin Rules Group, a Houston Rules Group, an XXX Rules Group - all local and all coming to October Rules Fest (ORF) each year to participate in a truly technical conference focused on technology and solutions rather than a business-oriented dog-and-pony show. The business guys have many, many conferences of their own, both by vendors such as FICO and ILOG, as well as the granddaddy of them all, the Business Rules Forum (BRF) hosted by Ron Ross et cie. (I hope that the business guys will attend the FICO user conferences that we do annually on many different topics.)

So, see you guys on the 2 Tuesday of each month. Check the web page (hopefully it will be up before the end of the month) for each months location, time, etc.

SDG

jco

Going Home...

2010-01-24T14:04:00.003-06:00

Greetings:

Quite a long time ago, there was an old spiritual song called "Going Home." Sometimes I think of that and realize that I don't really have a home. Yesterday a friend of mine asked me if I had ever been outside of the state of Texas - probably because I'm constantly promoting West Texas as THE place to live and work. For curiosity's sake I listed for him the places that I have worked or lived for at least two weeks (most for several months) in my brief life: The list contained 45 different cities, about 8 countries and did not count the few vacation spots. Home for me is where I hang my hats (about 10 of them) and set up my computers (about 7 or 8). Out of all those places and towns, I made the conscious decision to choose West Texas as my home. If there were a number two or three selection it probably would be either San Francisco, CA, or Paris, France.

Anyway, this is not a blog on where I've lived nor how many hat I have nor even the number of computers that I use for various types of research. Rather, it's about returning to the AI family of Neuron Data / Blaze Software / Fair Isaac / FICO. Beginning tomorrow morning (25 Jan 2010) I will be, once again, working with FICO in Product Management - mostly working on Blaze Advisor but, hopefully, branching out into business optimization software such as analytics and forecasting. After all, my master's degree was focused in Quantitative Analysis and Forecasting and I wrote my first white papers (part of my thesis back then) on rulebased systems as used to do early analysis of statistical data for proper analysis.

So, what about the benchmarking programs and things of that nature that I have been doing at KBSC all these years? Again, I'm calling on my old friend in Sweetwater, Texas, Yaakov Kohen, former CTO of KBSC and present-day horse-wrangler, to step in and do that. I will be giving all of my material over to him, along with the spreadsheets, to keep up to date. So, if you have any questions, please contact him at mailto:yaakov@kbsc.com in the future. Don't expect a quick reply since he is just a bit over 70 and still has the ranch to manage in addition to doing benchmarks, writing white papers and doing forecasting programs.

I suppose that Yaakov might be able to wrangle an article or two in InfoWorld should the editors there see past his advanced years and consider only that he is one of the brightest minds in the industry, one of my few mentors, and fairly forthright (non-diplomatic) in his opinions. Also, he is an excellent shot (sniper level) with both rifle and pistol. You HAVE to be to live in Sweetwater - it's the home of the annual Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup every year. An shooting pesky coyotes that tend to bring down a whole cow for just a snack on the open range calls for shots of about 1K yards or more.

October Rules Fest will be turned over to one of several person who have expressed an interest in the masochism of conference leadership. We have a 3:00 p.m. conference call tomorrow to kick that off for 2010 and, if you would like to be part of that, just send me your Skype ID and I'll see if I can get it on the list before the call starts.

All in all, I'm looking forward to returning to work with some good friends and moving Blaze Advisor to even greater heights. I'm not sure that this blog will continue - maybe FICO will let me start one with a FICO address like some other folks there.

SDG

jco

2010-01-07T14:03:00.003-06:00

Greetings:

About the same time that Texas became a nation (1934, to become a state nine years later), Richard Henry Dana, Jr., began writing an American classic novel called "Two Years Before the Mast" - an intriguing story of his last two years as a common sailor on board the Alert. He finished it about 1840, five years before Texas became a state via a treaty between the two nations. It has become my considered opinion after 30 years in service to various software vendors and 15 years working with rulebase vendors, (I call it "30 Years Before the Mast") that their engineers should pass a two-year (or more) training course as a consultant for that company BEFORE EVER being allowed to touch one line of code.

I say this after having spent considerable time with engineers who work for various (really) major rulebase companies. I have not encountered one (not one at the engineering level) who has ever had to make his living working with customers and, as a direct result, has absolutely no idea about how the their tool is actually used. I do know that there are those who help with consulting who have served their time in engineering, but not the reverse; except for Dr. Charles Forgy and Paul Haley. OK, there may be one or two more but I don't know them.

So, is there a problem? You betcha, Red Ryder!! And a major problem it is as well. It seems that you can't communicate with these guys about real-world problems because they can not grasp the entire problem at once and possibly foresee other problems that might result from their "quick fix" solution. So they slap a band aid (plaster to you English guys) on the problem and really hope and pray that it actually works.

Now, Heads UP senior engineering management guys: make sure that your staff has "real world" experience in actually USING your software BEFORE allowing them to make even the first modification.

SDG

jco

Monkeys, Queens and Cats

2009-12-30T09:53:00.004-06:00

Greetings:

[Short rant]

I have been doing AI type work since the late 80's (seems like only yesterday) and, like most who start in AI work or any kind of programming, we start with very simple problems. The first is always the ubiquitous "Hello World" program. The second, if you are learning inheritance or something of that nature, is checking to see if a child is a grandchild of another person or object or checking to see if this object or person is human or a toad and therefore has five fingers on each hand. Something like that.

For most who use rulebase tools we learn (or were supposed to have learned) the problem of how to help direct a monkey to find bananas to satisfy its hunger OR we learn how to solve the constraint problem of four, eight or sixteen queens on a chess board so that they none can capture the other one. The other one (thanks to the Monday night CBS TV series of "The Big Bang") is Schrodinger's cats. I really do think that these are excellent problems for initial learning experience in our little world of AI or its subset of rulebased systems.

Also, I consider MAB the best teaching tools for AI that we have - but it is, after all, a teaching tool for AI geeks, not something that the normal person outside of AI would ever consider. My Daddy used to say that people who do things like that are Educated Idiots or just Book Smart - meaning that they could solve complex problems in class but couldn't hammer a nail into a board nor saw a straight line and, therefore, useless in the real world.

The objection with continuing to solve and/or teach these problems is that once we have done them in class we tend to use them over and over and over in more advanced discussions as though we could not think beyond the beginner level of thought. Whenever we have to explain something outside of our close circle of friends and workmates, we always run back to our "comfort zone" and show "Hello World" or MAB. Also, to those outside of AI, who have never had to solve anything more complex than balancing their checkbooks, these problems seem rather silly and beyond the ken of the ordinary mortal and therefore not something for every day life.

PLEASE! Let's try and bring something to the table that (1) the ordinary mortal can understand and (2) that possibly has some real-world application(s). For example, what if we (a) had a problem in forecasting, or (b) a problem of finding a terrorist in L.A. or (c) how to process fluid flow in a petro-chemical plant so that we ensure that it will not blow up [and what to do if there is that possibility] or (d) complex shift scheduling or maintenance crew assignment or (e) complex resource assignment in a large manufacturing plant or (f) how to configure specialty helicopters?

OK, these are just thoughts. But if we, the AI community, can begin to establish some better examples then maybe we can be accepted and assimilated into the mainstream river of human thought. Maybe...

SDG

jco

Sunday Ramblings

2009-12-06T14:39:00.004-06:00

Greetings:

I just went to the following link that was sent to me by a friend:

http://java.sun.com/developer/media/deepdivejavawarehouse.jsp

It is, indeed, refreshing to see the older guys teaching the younger guys in a Sun-sponsored video. Having children (anyone less than 30) teaching a class should be an anomaly, not a normal thing. While we older troops should be enjoying our advancing years, at the same time we should recognize that we have something to contribute back to those same "children" who are still struggling with undocumented code, insufficient requirements and poorly constructed architecture. When they become frustrated with these daily problems, we can help them to understand those problems and show them how to deal with each one in the appropriate manner.

I think that as we deal with old age in our every day life, so then we learn to deal with death when it finally arrives. Some of us feel that we are still young, 20-year-old studs that have become trapped in in old man's body that is heir to all of the aches and pains of advancing years. I have come to think of that as God's way of preparing us for the end of life so that we welcome Death as a friend who has come to take us home and not as a protagonist against whom we have to fight.

But, so long as we stay alert and up to date on changes in the industry, do our own research, analyze our own data and prepare our own reports, then we will continue to amass knowledge and we can filter that new knowledge through the years of the pain of working with those who always "take the easy way out." This would be those programmers and scientists who don't try to understand the underlying principles of the art and science of their industry that is sometimes so elusive and seemingly unavailable to those who have had only a few years trying to make things work the right way when using apparently insufficient material. Nevertheless, having worked with younger programmers most of my life, I have found that if I can show them something new or a better way to do things, then I am usually accepted by my cohorts as just another geek trying to make sense out of senseless requirements.

So, to the older, more experienced technical personnel I say this; keep on learning. Never give up on a problem and turn it over to someone else just to make life easier. It is that very struggle, this exercise of the brain, to solve complex problems that makes us who we are. This struggle that gives us strength is much like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon that gives it the strength to fly away. The daily solving of those complex problems gives us the strength and the courage to manage smaller problems of everyday life.

SDG

jco

Rulebase Benchmarks 2009 Part 3

2009-11-18T09:36:00.004-06:00

Greetings:

Once again we return to the world of Rulebase Benchmarks. Benchmarks for rulebased systems seem to have three camps: Those who love them and usually have good numbers to report. Those whose benchmarks are not remarkable one way or the other and are not worried about them; yet. Those who benchmarks are not very good and keep telling their users and/or customers, "Yes. That's OK for academics. But those benchmarks don't represent the 'real world' in which we have to live and work every day."

At October Rules Fest 2009 I asked the T3 (Thursday Think Tank) if they thought benchmarks were important. Dr. Forgy (who has the fastest rulebase engine on the planet Earth - called TECH) and myself (who has spent the past decade exploring benchmarks, their cause and effect) were ardently in favor of such things. FICO (Blaze Advisor) folks were kind of OK with the idea, especially since they use Dr. Forgy's engine in their rulebase. The rest of the group, whose performance was anywhere from just barely OK to abysmal, were not really against using benchmarks but it just wasn't something that they wanted to discuss in public.

So, here's my proposal: If anyone can produce a "real world" benchmark that can be run on any rulebase engine on any platform, PLEASE DO SO!! Otherwise, those of us who are in this for the long haul will continue to examine a rulebase from many different viewpoints but we shall NOT throw out tried and true tests that continually disclose fatal faults in fancy products that will not perform with large data sets combined with large rule sets. Such applications are large banks, large insurance companies, Homeland Security along with "real world" AI problems in rulebased forecasting, petro-chemical processing problems, electrical power grid production problems, shift scheduling for large plants and/or hospitals and anywhere else that will have the many objects - many patterns complex cross products.

Speaking of which, I guess it's about time to publish the 2009 Benchmarks. Our goal is to finish up in December some time so that at least we can say that we finished this year with a completed product. :-)

SDG

jco

World Conference on Artificial Intelligence

2009-10-18T09:13:00.003-05:00

Dallas, Texas; Oct 18, 2009, KBSC:

I'm not sure if I learned this poem in Junior High School or High School, probably the latter:

Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

Of course you recognize "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I thought of that poem last night when I was thinking of the upcoming October Rules Fest 2009 to be held in Dallas, Texas, at the Adolphus Hotel from October 26th - 30th. This conference reminded me of the 1956 Dartmouth College conference where the term Artificial Intelligence, AI, was first used. Those were the giants in the computer age then and ORF 2009 has their pride and joy students presenting the future of rulebased computing (a part of AI) in Dallas.

For example, Dr. Charles Forgy, considered one of the godfathers of that technology, will be speaking on parallel rulebased systems, something that no one is doing today. Well, not yet, anyway... But he and a few others at Carnegie Mellon University, CMU, in Pittsburgh, PA, pioneered that concept back in the 1980's. Thomas Cooper, another CMU grad, worked on the early implementations for XCON, a computer configuration program done by CMU under a DoD grant for Digital Equipment Corporation, DEC, that saved DEC over $1M per year in manpower. Tom is the keynote speaker on where the industry started, where they are now, and where they are going. Tom went on to co-author the first book on the language, OPS5, that was used to make life easier for all concerned.

The other pioneers who will be presenting will be Dr. Richard Hicks, inventor of EZ-Xpert rulebased system and considered to be THE expert on Validation and Verification of rulebased systems; Gary Riley, co-inventor of CLIPS (C-Language Interface to Production Systems) which was the first C/C++ implementation of rulebased system and it was specially developed for NASA; Carlos Seranno-Morales, the co-inventor of Neuron Data Advisor, one of the first Java (a computing language like BASIC or COBOL) versions of a rulebased system; Mark Proctor, co-inventor of Drools (Dynamic Object Oriented Language System) that was one of the very first implementations of an XML/Java version of a rulebase and is totally open source; Dr. Hafedh Mili, who wrote all of the early ILOG JRules rulebase tutorials; Dr. Jacob Feldman, inventor of Open Rules, a rulebase that comes with source code; Jason Morris, an early adopter of Jess (Java Expert System Shell), which was the first of the Java implementations of a rulebase a close copy of the CLIPS system, who is a recognized authority, lecturer and teacher on that system; Dr. Daniel Levine, a local professor at University of Texas Arlington, who is not only an early pioneer in Artificial Neural Networks (another division of AI) but also works with rulebased systems, psychology of the inner workings of the mind and is a widely published author; Dr. Gopal Gupta a local professor at University of Texas Dallas who works with constraint-based programming, another part of rulebased systems; Dr. Leon Kappelman (North Texas University) and John Zachman, the leaders in the world of Enterprise Architecture, will be presenting a two hour talk on how all of this can be road-mapped for executives, managers, programmers and users.

All in all, this is one of the most technical conferences in the world. It bridges the gap between academia, industry and software vendors so that there will be greater cohesion and understanding between all concerned. The T3 (Thursday Think Tank) is a highlight of the conference wherein all of the thought leaders get together in a four-hour, open panel discussion (open to all ORF attendees) and discuss what is needed by rulebased systems that will probably set the directions for the rulebase industry for the next decade. Oh, what does all of this have to do with Paul Revere? Nobody seems to remember the Dartmouth College Conference that started all of this.

SDG

jco

(James Owen is the founder of ORF and a globe-trotting consultant on rulebase systems architecture and implementation.)

[Note: The above is being made available to The Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star Telegram, London Financial Times, New York Times, and other major media outlets for publication during the week of Oct 19th - 26th. Should you wish to forward to your local newspaper, please feel free to do so.]

Small Corrections

2009-10-08T10:20:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Small corrections to the previous post: Neither Gary nor Leon will actually have their books on sale AT the conference itself. However, should you already have the book(s) mentioned I sure that they would agree to sign them. :-)

SDG

jco

ORF 2009 and the Dartmouth Conference

2009-10-06T15:00:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

As you may not know, the term AI (Artificial Intelligence) was first coined by those attending the Dartmouth College Conference way back in 1956. You can read the invitation list at http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html if you like. The absolute best attended that conference. And that is what started our industry.

So, what does that have to do with ORF 2009? Because we have the best of the best of the best speaking at ORF 2009. And some of them are students of those who started all of this way back in 1956. ORF 2009 will be world-shattering and I, for one, have no idea of how to tell the world what we have here. Think of Woodstock - who knew? Well, I know from the white papers that are coming in and from the presentations that are coming in AND from the credentials of those who are speaking that we might never have such an event again.

If you know of anyone in the media who can see the dream, who can grasp what is happening here later this month, PLEASE tell them about it. This is not a Dallas thing. This is not a Texas thing. This is a world-shaking event. And, to reiterate, it might never happen again. The responses that I have heard so far is, "OK, it's a conference on geek stuff. So what? Those happen all the time." Not true. Not like this. Not with THESE kinds of speakers and topics.

I'm not a PR guy. I'm not a marketeer. I'm a geek and I don't know how to get the word out to the rest of the world that this could very well be a once-in-a-lifetime event. So, if you do know someone who can help, please ask them to do that very thing. Thanks,

SDG

jco

October Rules Fest 2009 Update

2009-10-06T14:24:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

Lots and lots of things happening at ORF 2009 so let's just get right to it:

Drools Boot Camp, all day Sunday and Monday morning. Free for ORF attendees. Small charge for DBC only. Mark Proctor and Edson Tirelli teaching. See link for details.

Jess Boot Camp, all day Sunday and Monday morning. Free for ORF attendees. Small charge for JBC only. Jason Morris (Jess guru and certified trainer) teaching. See link for details.

Tom Cooper, co-author of "Rule-based Programming With OPS5", will be our Keynote Speaker. Tom goes WAY back and is one of the pioneers of rulebased systems. The book is still available but has been out of print for quite some time.

Discounted Books. We don't have the complete list yet but there will be lots of rulebase specific books deeply discounted (more than Amazon) for ORF attendees. Dr. Kappelman and Gary Riley will have theirs there for signing (if you're into the groupie thing - I am) and I'm sure that we will have some more before the conference starts.

T3 - Thursday Think Tank - is really gearing up to be one of the highlights of the conference. Our take on this is that the outcome might set the direction(s) for rulebased systems (BRMS) for the next decade.

TECH, Dr. Forgy's new algorithm, will be discussed.

Several talks on Complex Event Processing (CEP) by the leaders in the field. Dr. Forgy has stated that this could well be one of the most important advances for rulebased systems for this century.

The Adolphus has dropped their room rates to $129 / night in order to encourage you to stay where the action is. BUT, we have only a limited number of rooms at this rate so get your reservation in early.

STUDENT FEES will be $150 which will also allow them to attend either of the boot camps. We just announced this and already students are signing up. Meaning that they might jolly well take up the conference slots so you need to hurry and get your conference registration NOW !!

Ping Pong / Table Tennis and/or Foosball has been cancelled due to lack of interest. Sorry about that. I was looking forward to a tournament kind of evening.

Speakers: New speakers and assistants - we have 30 of them now and it is a single track conference so you don't have to make those mind-wrenching decisions as to which one to attend.

White Papers and Presentations will be available during the conference for you to load on your computer to follow along.

Brochures will be available at the conference and electronically later this week. (Thanks, Chelanie). This will be a real keep-sake for your Golden Years.

So, if you haven't registered already, do so NOW. He who hesitates is lost. :-)

SDG

jco

Day Two - FICO Decision Management Tools User Group

2009-09-18T11:44:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Wow. Yesterday was good but today was even better. One interesting this is that Oracle was presenting on an idea and their presenter did not know that Oracle had bought a rulebase (two of them, in fact: Rule Burst & Haley Expert Systems) of their own that is a direct competitor to FICO's Blaze Advisor. Weird, really weird.

OK, performance issues - I ran through a brief (55 minute) presentation on how to improve performance. More of how NOT to get into trouble although I did point out some time-proven tips on how to make even Advisor run faster.

Then came the Illinois Death March: We took a bus to the lake for a river cruise. (whater...) The bus dropped us off and we walked past ship after ship after ship. Now, understand, walking a mile is not such a big deal UNLESS you have a bad back, two knees that need to be replaced and pinched nerves in your neck. Then (after a rather nice meal onboard the ship) we had to walk BACK! So, thank the Lord for Hydrocodone and Soma. Between the two I made it through the night.

So, wrapping up today. Tonight begins Rosh Hoshanna so a lot of the guys have to get home in time for services. People are here from all over the world; Russia, Lithuania, Israel, France and even one or two from Texas. :-) So, this will be the last report on this conference. Nothing technical. You'll have to get that from FICO since everything is copyrighted into their vault of knowledge.

SDG

jco

Day One - FICO Decision Management Tools User Group

2009-09-17T06:06:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

First day started at 13:00 but I couldn't get through traffic and arrived at 15:00. I went to the Decision Support clinic headed by Don Grice and Maarten Van Lier that started at 13:00 or so and I was so far behind that I'll have to catch up later.

The hotel is nice but the 17:30 cheese-and-wine was awesome. Lots of brisket, pasta bar, chips-and-dips, beer/wine/etc. bars made it nice. But with my bad back I could only stand up for so long. Lots of old friends there: Tom Travis, Vlad Silverman, Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon, Carlos Seranno-Morales (Europeans are really big on double last names). Willie Hall and Mark Eastwood are supposed to arrive tomorrow.

The conference itself seems focused on business users rather than geeks. (So what am I doing here?) Several good talks lined up for today including some on Blaze Advisor and business optimization tools. My talk will be on optimizing Blaze Advisor at 16:00 today and then FICO has a river-boat tour and supper planned. I'm not sure if the PPTs or talks will be available to the general public but if they are I'll let you know. Maarten's talk last night was pretty good so I hope that they do release them to the great, unwashed masses. :-)

SDG

jco

MIND Over Matter: If You Don't Mind Then It Doesn't Matter

2009-09-14T16:55:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

If you don't already subscribe to the Mind magazine, may I suggest that you consider it. Drop by your local magazine store or book store and take a look at what is on the shelf and then save a few coins by subscribing to the magazine on an annual basis. Why? OK, here's a couple of thoughts that I got from one of the more recent issues:

Do you remember the last (or next to last) session of M.A.S.H. on TV? It seems that there were some villagers trying to hide from some enemy soldiers and, if caught, all would be killed. One of the young mothers had a baby with her and the baby, as they will do from time to time, was scared and began to cry. The rest of the villagers kept telling her to be quiet or they all would die. The mother ended up suffocating the baby in her attempt to keep it quiet. Questions: Was she right to kill her child to keep the other villagers from being found out and not only killed but probably tortured as well? What did this have to do with MIND magazine?

It seems that whenever the mind is presented with a conundrum such as this that certain portions of the brain are activated. In younger minds, they are, basically, stored in one location. In older minds, the job is distributed out to more than one part of the brain. What I think is happening is that older minds have to consider more than one answer and that the outcomes are different depending on which solution is implemented and when it is done and how it is done. This comes all the way back around to rulebased systems: It's the Senior KE, the Senior Knowledge Engineer, the Rule Architect that will make a huge difference in the overall outcome.

Why? Because that Senior KE has seen the pitfalls of what happens when certain logical paths are followed and has experienced the outcomes of failures in the past. What was it that George Satayana said? "Those who will not learn from history are forced to repeat it." (Often attributed to Ben Franklin but supposedly he got it from George...) We learn from our mistakes. The more intelligent ones learn from the mistakes of others. It seems that some never learn but have keep making the same mistake over and over and over. My favorite is the company that hears about off-shoring work at really, really cheap rates. What they don't hear about are all of the problems connected with different cultures, different languages, different work habits, the advantage of face-to-fact meetings, etc.

The other one is when a company refuses to pay the higher rates of a senior consultant and hires a programmer who is really, really good at Java or C/C++ and assigns them to do the work that truly needs a Senior KE to direct the effort. the project goes down the porcelain receptacle reserved for such sludge and management brazenly decides that a rulebased solution was not needed for a project such as this. No one really loses their jobs because the smart ones bailed out after the first few months and went on the bigger and better things. Those stuck with the smelly thing can then blame those who started it. Those who started it blame those who followed it with not carrying out their particular vision and, of course, it went bad.

Now, wasn't that fun? And I'm sure that most of the senior guys have been on the Project From Hell, Death March, etc. By whatever name, it wasn't much fun if you were on the final march and, as consultants called in to save such a fiasco, it's usually impossible with what is left of the budget. But, once in a while, it is possible and what remains of management is so desperate that they actually let you do the right thing. And you get to be the hero. One or two of those go a long, long way toward making up for all of the fiascos foisted upon you in the past.

So, what is the lesson to be learned here? Take care and be wary of what you accept when management is willing to pay a higher rate plus expenses. There HAS to be a catch somewhere and I'll bet it's because some ninny has already messed up the playground.

More and more good news on ORF 2009

2009-09-13T16:20:00.000-05:00

Greetings:

First, some GREAT news! We have re-arranged the Agenda so that we could accommodate a "Thursday Afternoon Think Tank on Needful Things." This would be a round table discussion (with some attendee participation) on various subjects that concern the more technical aspects of rulebased systems rather than their direct application to problems per se. Those who have agreed to be on the panel are Dr. Charles Forgy, Mark Proctor, Gary Riley, Dr. Jacob Feldman, Dr. Richard Hicks, Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon, Carlos Seranno-Morales, Jason Morris and Paul Vincent. For example, a few of the topics will (might) be Complex Event Processing, Benchmarks in This Century, Patterns in Rulebased Systems, Finite State Machines as a Special Type of Rules, etc. This is focused more on the "hard core" developers and "thought leaders" in the rulebase field. However, ALL attendees and/or speakers are invited to attend and be part of the direction(s) that rulebased systems might take for the next decade.

Another change is that there will be another Drools Boot Camp (like last year) headed up by Mark Proctor. This will be co-located with October Rules Fest in The Adolphus hotel and will be all day SUNDAY and MONDY morning. Since Mark and Edson will be there anyway this was a great opportunity for another in a great series of DBCs that Mark has done in the past. The DBC will be absolutely free for ORF attendees but there will be a charge if you are attending DBC only so that we can pay for the room, coffee, etc.

Finally, the conference proper will start on MONDAY AFTERNOON rather than Tuesday morning. The lead-off speaker will be Lawrence Terrill on a really good explanation of the Rete Algorithm - one of the best that I have ever seen.

I've been reading through some of the early submissions of the White Papers for October Rules Fest and they are really outstanding! Dr. Charles Forgy's paper on parallel rulebased systems (need and solutions) is fantastic. As is that of Gary Riley on optimizing performance in CLIPS. Andrew Waterman submitted one on games and is looking for folks to submit more add-ons. Dr. Richard Hicks has submitted one on Validation and Verification that everyone should read. (He is giving each attendee a free copy of the game.) Dr. Daniel Levine's paper explores the inner-dimension of the brain itself, its own self-imposed rules and problems with "rational thought process." Remember, all of these will be available at no charge only to attendees at ORF 2009.

Anyway, you need to sign up (if you haven't already done so) and be sure to reserve a hotel room. We still have a few places left.

SDG

jco

http://www.OctoberRulesFest.org

He Who Knows...

2009-08-29T14:19:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

Nothing much to do with rules specifically but more with things in general. I ran across an old by-line that I used to use a long time ago:

"He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool.

Shun him.

He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a child.

Teach him.

He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep.

Wake him.

He who knows and knows that he knows is a genius.

Follow him."

This was supposedly an old Hindu proverb but who knows? Maybe Ben Franklin made it up but it sounds too psychological to be Ben. On large projects I've met all kinds distributed in a natural distribution pattern. Maybe one or two at the top and one or two at the top. Maybe. But lots in between which is pretty much a compliment to programmers everywhere.

Here's the problem: What to do with the first one? Management picked this guy and he/she is a "valuable" member of the development team. I had to point this out to a company once after a two-week gig to help them get started with rules. I told ONLY the Senior Director for the project after he pointedly asked about each person. But his pride-and-joy manger had picked that individual to move from being a contractor to leading the rule development team. The guy had been doing C/C++ stuff for two years and had made very little progress toward a real rulebased system. But, in his defense, his GUI stuff looked really cool.

Truly, he didn't know rulebase development and he didn't know that he didn't know. Their regular employee on the team (who would have to work for this ninny) was more of the second kind; eager to learn anything that you could teach him. I'm not sure where the manager fit on the chart but she certainly was convinced that she had made her decision and she was going to back it up 100%. Also, unfortunately for me, she was the one who hired me and I had to tell her the same thing. They were ecstatic about the analysis that I had done until 2:00 the afternoon that I was leaving. By 2:15 all bets were off. So, I didn't get called back for the traditional "sanity check" because the bare, naked truth was out of the bag and on the table. Now they had to justify keeping these plans and that meant that they did NOT want anything to do with facts.

As one of my old managers used to tell me, "James, you have great technical skills. It's your 'soft skills" that need work. You don't know how to tell anyone diplomatically that what they are doing is trash and that their development personnel need five years training just to get up to the zero level. Sometimes you can't tell someone the truth straight out - you have to sugar coat it so that it tastes better." He was right, of course. Maybe one day I'll find a home where I can just DO things and not have to worry about feelings. So, that's my tale of adventures with the upper class of management. I don't belong there. Hopefully you can learn from that and be nice to nit-wits and dweebs. After all, if God didn't love them he wouldn't have made so many of them. :-)

SDG

jco

Benchmarks 2009 to follow ORF 2009

2009-08-24T18:33:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Just a quick follow-up on all of the earlier posts about Benchmarks. It looks like I'll be doing them AFTER the October Rules Fest rather than before. Too much stuff has piled up on my plate. I do plan on doing CLIPS and Jess on WaltzDB-200 since the code is already written for those. And I've run most of the OPSJ and TECH stuff already. But the multi-platform and optimization as well as the code for Advisor, JRules, Drools and others will have to wait until after ORF 2009 is over. If anyone has a suggestion, or wants to write the code for the last three, I would appreciate it.

It's beginning to look as though the Annual Benchmark Cook-Off will have to be done the last two months of each year since that seems to be when most companies begin to shut down and then crank up again in January.

SDG

jco

FICO Forum: Decision Management Tools User Group

2009-08-24T14:45:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

The FICO Forum: Decision Management Tool User Group will meet on September 16 - September 18 at the Hotel Allegro in Chicago, IL. FICO has kindly asked me to chat with the FICO Blaze Advisor users about optimizing rules, benchmarks and things of that nature. My talk will be on September 17th so if you happen to be in Chicago at the time be sure to come by the conference. There is a lot more than my talk, of course, and this can be found at

http://www.online-reg.com/FICO/2009/dmtools/

http://www.online-reg.com/FICO/2009/dmtools/speakers.lasso

if you would like more information about the conference itself or the other speakers. Like most other conferences, I would like to be able to attend all four tracks but I can only attend one session at a time - so in addition to having to attend my own presentation (one that I already know quite well) I'll miss out on 3/4 of the great stuff, including the half-day tutorials on Wednesday. All-in-all, it should be a really great conference.

SDG

jco

October Rules Fest 2009 Books available

2009-08-07T17:33:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

More conference news:

More good news for attendees: Dr. Leon Kappleman, a widely recognized authority on Enterprise Architcture, has made it possible for attendees to order his new book on "The SIM Guide to Enterprise Architecture" that normally retails for $59.95 and get a 40% discount. You can get better preliminary details at http://www.routledge.com/books/The-SIM-Guide-to-Enterprise-Architecture-isbn9781439811139 where you can some more details about the book itself. [Added note 10 Aug] Here is a list of contributors to the book: http://courses.unt.edu/kappelman/aboutwork/Book%20Slide%201.pdf

So: Register for the conference THEN register at the hotel for the conference rate. If you have ANY problems (registering OR getting the special ORF rate at the hotel) PLEASE let either myself or Chelanie know about it. See you in October!

Finally: If anyone else has a book that they would like to offer discounts to ORF conference attendees, please let us know and we will start a listing of all of them. But, right now, this is the only one. Enjoy...

SDG

jco

Benchmarking at ORF 2009, Part 7

2009-08-07T17:17:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

Conference News:

Dr. Forgy has just about finished up his new algorithm - there's always some last minute thing that needs to be done. While testing his new TECH algorithm on my variousl platforms I have found it to be about an order of magnitude faster then Rete 2 or Rete III on both my MacIntosh, Core2Duo Unix environment and the Windows 64-bit Dell i7. On the i7 (that is effectively 8 CPUs) it scales nicely and provides even faster performance. I can't wait to get my 8-core Mac Pro (the Nehalem 2x4 CPU) and see how it runs there. Dr. Forgy has agreed to discuss the new algorithm after hours during Pub Nights in the Walt Garrison restaurant and bar that is located in The Adolphus Hotel.

OH! You wanted numbers? OK, the only comparison that I have right now is OPSJ versus TECH but here is what I have so far - lots more to come later and I'll publish it all at ORF. We had to use a new benchmark because TECH runs so blooming fast that it's hard to compare the difference in 1.2 seconds and 0.57 seconds as anything meaningful when running WaltzDB-16. OPSJ runs that one 2.7 seconds on the Core2Duo Mac and in 0.433 seconds on the Dell i7. TECH is not really measurable.

WaltzDB-200 (New Benchmark for 2009) - in seconds

Core2Duo Mac, Leopard, 3GB RAM:

OPSJ: 46.467

TECH: 4.549

Dell i7 64-bit Vista, 6GB RAM

OPSJ: 17.466

TECH: 2.362

So, that's pretty much a 10:1 (or thereabouts) speed improvement firing 246,233 rules. Remember, OPSJ is the underlying engine in Java that incorporates Rete 2 / Rete III, the fastest Java rulebase on the planet Earth. Until now, that is. Also, remember that I have NOT finished the full comparisons checkout and double-checked everything to be sure that they are the same and firing the same rules and doing everything. But, so far, it looks pretty fantastic. As soon as I get a chance I'll do the other BRMS and rulebased systems including Drools, Blaze Advisor, Jess, CLIPS and (possibly) JRules.

Depending on when his patents are approved and finalized, Dr. Forgy will be happy to talk with you at ORF about this ground-breaking technology.

SDG

jco

Manny and James

2009-08-04T16:29:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

I could start this blog with a cute saying, but the essence of the blog is more serious so I shan't. Manny Gandarillas posted an article http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2009/b487.html on BR Forum that was a tongue-in-cheek view of the different views of a rulebase as experienced by different personnel on any rulebased program. Subsequently, James Taylor posted a response on BR Forum at http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2009/b487.html where he took Manny to task for some of the things that he said. So, just to add another view, permit me just a quick view of both articles and an even briefer rejoinder.

First, neither Haley Expert Rules nor Mind Box are considered "leaders" in the world of BRMS. Way back in 2004, with some agreement from both ILOG and FICO, I wrote a brief definition for a BRMS at http://www.infoworld.com/t/business/business-rules-management-systems-548 that was pretty much as brief as one could be and still say anything about it in a 400-word side bar. In that description I did say that, for the most part, the business analysts should be writing the code BUT with the guidance of a full-blown knowledge engineer. Since that time I have seen situations where the BAs did not want any help whatsoever from the IT guys except to construct the architecture for the Java classes, database, web screens, whatever. In other situations, the BAs wanted no part of writing the rules except for writing them into the rules document and letting the IT department implement them in what ever fashion they deemed fit so long as it passed the final testing for both validation, verification and speed.

Let's face it: The business guys have the money but have not the technical expertise to use it properly if left alone. The IT guys know how to implement things but the real rules of business are usually beyond their job skills. The rules help implement the "what" and the "why" of what happens in the coropration, not the "how". The "how" is normally left up to IT. BUT, at what point do we draw the line between the BAs and the IT guys? This last bit is what can cause a BRMS to fail if one party or the other cannot resolve their power struggles and work in harmony with the other. Business is, after all, the customer of the IT department. And if business wants things to work correctly, they need to be friends with the geeks.

I do think that James is spot-on about the business personnel not needing to care about forward or backward chaining, sequential or Rete or Dete or whatever - it's the geeks who will have to make this blooming thing perform properly and scale to enterprise proportions who will be, should be, concerned about those things. And the BAs will HAVE to work with the IT guys to accept that some things will work and some things won't work.

However, let's get one thing perfectly clear: When the BAs take over the logic of the rules then THEY are the ones responsible for the testing and verification of the results, not the IT guys. To me, this has and should be one of the great things about a real BRMS; the BAs take responsibility for what actually happens. Normally, this kind of arrangement just provides more and more work for the IT guys who have to design more enterprise architecture to handle all of the various rulebased system (BRMS) that will begin to crop up once the word gets out that the rules CAN be changed, tested, verified and put into productions in days (three to five) rather than months. BUT, and this is equally important, the design of a proper BRMS is not an easy task and it DOES require the expertise of someone who has done this several times for many different companies and knows where the land mines are located.

Bottom line: Even with the shameless plug for BR Forum and his book, James is right on several of the points. However, Manny did bring up some bullet points that gave us a focus on our discussion. Personally, while I might not agree with all of the contained thoughts in Manny's chart, it was unique and should be shared for further consideration by most vendors. (OK, it's a twist on the old view of an elephant joke.) Now, for my shameless plug: If you guys really, really ant to get into the technical semantics of BRMS, come to October Rules Fest in Dallas, http://www.OctoberRulesFest.org and see what the CIOs and technical architects think about the BRMS hype.

BTW, what is the best way to eat that infamous elephant? (A: One bite at a time.) The same applies to a BRMS or rulebase or any other unfamiliar territory. Take it slow, make something small work first with the ultimate goal to incorporate all of the corporate knowledge into the rules. Not today, not this year. But maybe in five years. :-)

SDG

jco

Only Three More Days !!

2009-07-28T13:50:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

If you want to attend the October Rules Fest AND you would like to avail yourself of the Early Bird Discount of $50, you should do so by midnight (PDT, GMT -8) THIS Friday night, July 31st. That's when it expires.

Also, remember that the first 100 attendees to sign up will get the best seating in the house. All attendees and speakers will have power outlets and WiFi available in the meeting room itself. But the first 100 or so will be two persons at a 6' (just under two meters) table.

I have said this so many times that I'm beginning to sound like a cracked record - if you're old enough to remember records made of vinyl that had a tendency to get caught in a groove and just repeat itself over and over and over... Anyway, ORF 2009 has absolutely the BEST Technical Speakers in the world. AND, these guys will be hanging around during the conference to chat with the attendees - especially during Pub Nights.

Who else can say that they bought a beer for Mark "Drools" Proctor, Charles "Dr. Rete" Forgy, Jason "The Jess Answer Man" Morris, Gary "CLIPS" Riley, John "EA" Zachman, Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon, Carlos "Advisor" Seranno-Morales, Paul "Tibco" Vincent, Edson "CEP" Terilli, Daniel "TurboGeek" Brookshier, Rick "V&V" Hicks, Daniel "ANN" Levine, Hafedh "I wrote the books on JRules" Mili or Jacob "Open Rules" Feldman?? But, if you are at the conference and hang out on Pub Night at the Walt Garrison Room, YOU might !! :-)

The main theme of this year is just like last year: Have Fun! We are doing the one thing that we enjoy the most (outside of one or two indoor activities) and we should be having lots and lots of fun doing it. Last year was simply great. This year is even better. Better Hotel. Better location. Better presentations. I would say better speakers but some are the same as last year BUT we have many new speakers who will knock your socks off!! And the vendors who are the sponsors will have the very best technical personnel to answer your most perplexing problems.

This year, we will have redundancy on the video / audio recording so that we don't have gaps like last year. We learned our lesson about depending on a single source of technology. Greg Barton has promised the best recording and Chelanie Israel has promised to deliver a truly professional, well-polished product for those who attended the meeting. And, no, we do not have plans to sell the video to anyone. It's our free gift to those who attend the conference - and ONLY to them.

Sign up NOW and avoid the rush AND get an extra 10% along the way. Also, when you sign up, be SURE to sign up at the hotel for the special rates. If you have any trouble whatsoever, send me an email and let me know. [ jco@kbsc.com ]

SDG

jco

Agile Programming

2009-06-30T16:56:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Recently I've been thinking that I need another blog - one that I would use just to vent and blow off steam at the stupidity of some of the things that we do as programmers. One of those is something called "Agile Programming" where two programmers work on one computer, both at the same time; one writing, one watching and commenting. This was all hyped up a couple of years ago that, in my own opinion, was to help the "less developed" programmers ramp up quicker by being teamed with a more experienced programmer. (Surely you wouldn't put two of the newbies together, would you?)

Anyway, the sheer though of having to explain everything that I do to a newbie who hasn't taken the time to read the first book on rulebase theory, has forgotten everything that he/she might ever have known about statistics, has never had an accounting course in their life and reads only blogs like this for information (OK, they don't even read blogs any more; they just listen to "tweets" and such) sends me into tremors of sheer terror. Don't get me wrong; there is a place for training. But that place is NOT when you are behind schedule (aren't you always?) and you need to get something "done" by the end of the day/week/month.

So, when do the newbies get training from the old timers? When those things are scheduled for (maybe) an hour or two each day or each week. When the trainer can have time to properly present the complete thought process that goes behind each precept of a programming paradigm. When the logic of a though process is presented in a proper methodology rather than a series of "Why" statements followed by an answer that is intended to just shut the other person up rather than teach. This is because you are trying actually to THINK through a laborious process. When done in this manner, sometimes learning takes place. Hopefully.

At our last Java MUG meeting the speaker was pointing out the time that it took to build an idea or a process in your head and that, if interrupted by various things, how long it would take to get back on track. It was actually very revealing. Without intending to do so, he proved my point. Once you are interrupted you can not just turn around and pick up where you left off. Depending on how long was the interruption time and for what reason, it could easily take 15 or 20 minutes to get back to that level of concentration and/or that step in the workflow process.

Which is why I take the phone off the hook, shut the door to my office and put my headphones on when I am trying to concentrate and work on something that requires that level of focus and thought. BTW, during the meeting I did ask if anyone had ever done Agile Programming. Only two guys raised their hands and only one thought that it was a good idea to do programming in that manner. BUT, he did qualify that it was only effective for about four hours a day. According to him, productivity and quality of programming went (way?) up when Agile programming was used. That tells me that the problem "might" have been way too many newbies who needed to improve their programming skills. But, that's probably just my prejudices talking.

When did I personally use Agile Programming? Only two clients have ever tried to force me to do that. One was for a major insurance company in the USA and the other was in the UK. At the USA company it came down to either I would have to leave or they would have lower their expectations of what I was doing. After my rebellion all of the other senior consultants did the same thing and the whole idea was thrown out.

The client in the UK kept sending me really low-paid technicians hired from 4th-world countries who didn't have the foggiest idea of how to use a rulebase nor what was the thought process. I was working as an emloyee at that time for a major BRMS vendor and, at first, they resisted. But when the 4th-world vendor sent two or three of their techies to school and became a partner, then I was asked to reconsider. I told them the same thing; I could do that but production would suffer if I had to stop and explain every little thing to a newbie. Besides, I was not being paid to train personnel outside of my company. If they needed more training then they could go to the vendor-provided school for more advanced courses. They didn't and neither did I.

So, did I ever try it and have it fail? Nope. My clients wanted me working on rulebase problems 100% of the time and were not willing to pay me my normal rate to train a newbie; not even one of their own employees.

Comments to this blog are always welcome. Even when you believe in something as silly as Agile Programming and how it can improve the quality and quantity of programming code. I would ask only that if you do think Agile Programming is a good thing that you tell us of your personal experience and how it helped the quality and quantity of the programming code. And be specific; not that the programming was "better" but how this "better" was measured with and without Agile Programming. What benchmarks did you or your company use that would help guide the rest of us in measuring the "quality and quantity" of the programming code. And if you believe, as I do, that Agile Programming is for really strange people then tell us why in very specific term and in reference to personal experience. Thanks,

SDG

jco

More on Benchmarks for 2009

2009-06-18T15:41:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

Just another post to TRY and get some discussion started on benchmarks. All I seem to get from the vendors is, "Those old things? Those are not 'real-world' benchmarks!" OK, no argument here... So, does anyone have a "real-world" benchmark? No? Fine, then we will use what we have and hope for the best since they seem to work fine on checking the rule processing performance (using almost "real-world" rules) on most engines.

Checking performance on a modeling tool, such as Corticon, Visual Rules, Rule Burst, VisiRules, any Decision Table or Decision Tree, is absolutely NOT what checking rule processing power is all about. [I'll probably catch some flak on that remark but those just my personal feelings.] If you already have the rules hard-coded using either straight-up Java or some kind of modeling tool that produces Java code (such as sequential rules or something else along those lines) then that SHOULD run faster than a real rulebase engine that is designed from the ground up to be an inferencing engine based on whatever algorithm you like.

However, I would like this year to allow a couple of things that I have not done in the past: (1) Allow a "warm-up" time of maybe three or four code passes through all of the rules using different date each time and then running the rules for 10 consecutive passes using 10 different sets of data and taking the average time for the benchmark time. In years past, rules did not run under EJB/J2EE or similar environments (we had Java for several years before we had J2EE/EJB) and we did not allow such things. However, with the increased overhead of having to have that in the core part of the engine I think that it should be allowed. (2) I'm going to drop the old version of Miss Manners 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256 and substitute Miss Manners 2009 - which is the ORF example for this year. (3) The other two benchmarks from the old days are still good, Waltz-50 and WaltzDB-16. (4) However, we are introducing a new WaltzDB-200 this year just to really get some long lead times. (5) We will run these all on the following systems

a1. Mac Core2Duo, 3GB RAM, OS X Leopard, 64-bit (which is Free BSD Unix with a pretty face)

a2. Mac Dual-Quad Core, 8GB RAM, OS X White Leopard, 64-bit [maybe...]

b. HP Intel, 3GB RAM, Dual Threaded, Windows XP, 32-bit

c. Dell Intel i7, 4-core, 8-threads, 6GB RAM, Windows Vitria 64-bit

I might try to work in some Linux if there seems to be any significant speed differentiation on an Intel running Linux or Windows - but experience teaches that usually the Windows version runs faster. But I will check it anyway just to be sure. (6) The systems that I am hoping to check will be (alphabetical order)

a. Blaze Advisor 6.7

b. Drools Version 5.x
c. CLIPS Version 3.0b
d. Jess 7.0-p2
e. JRules Version 6.7.3 or 7.x (depends...)

f. OPSJ Version 6.0

g. OPSJ-NT Version 1.0

Probably, I will publish the results here, along with the previous years of Performance benchmarks, as well as on the KBSC home page. The comparisons of 32-bit and 64-bit should tell us something about scalability. The comparisons of different OS should tell us something about scalability and transportability.

One more thing: If any of the other vendors can demonstrate a suitable version of the benchmarks I will include them - but NOT the same thing that I did a few years ago when I allowed a "similar" version of the benchmarks to be used by a vendor that could not code straight-up IF - THEN - ELSE rules using a NOT statement in there somewhere.

I do expect cheating on the part of the vendors. Somehow, I must find a benchmark somewhere that will not allow that so I'll probably throw in a one that has lots of NOT statements in it or something really rude like that. I know that the vendors don't really pay attention to benchmarks any more so I'm hoping that the customers of these and other vendors will stress performance benchmarks to their suppliers as another check of good engineering. Layering GUI after GUI after Model after Model is cool EXCEPT when you forget how to perform under the pressure of millions of transactions per day that need complex, real rulebase-type analysis.

SDG

jco

2009 Benchmarks - Again

2009-06-11T09:01:00.006-05:00

Greetings:

Sometimes I wonder how many folks find this subject of intense interest and how many are totally bored with the idea of comparing benchmarks? Why even have benchmarks? After all, most vendors seem to think that companies are not interested in them so long as the product will "do the job in the real world." OK, let's pursue that line of thought for just a moment.

Let's say that you are buying a car for your company. Some of the constraints are the mileage, longevity, repair frequency (time and costs), ROI of the auto, etc. All of these are benchmarks. Let's say that you are not buying a car for yourself nor for your company but you buying for the military and you want an armored vehicle. Then the constraints would be how effective is the bullet proofing, what firepower is mounted standard, what is the performance in sand and mud, what is the carrying capacity, etc. Again, all of this is benchmarking.

Now, let's say that you pick up any car magazine in your local bookstore. Check the charts and you will find under performance the times for 0 - 60 mph, standing 1/4 mile performance and top speed. Again, benchmarks. And, agreed, none of these are real-world benchmarks since very few people take their Corvette or Camero from 0 to 60 more than once or twice and almost none of them would ever take their auto over 150 mph. BUT, these are benchmarks for automobiles. This is why we have such things as the Le Mans 24 Hour race - another benchmark to determine the best of breed.

Benchmarks for databases have been here since their advent and no one has ever complained about them. OK, not very much. Spec-Int and Spec-fp tell the potential customer how well the database that is being considered for purchase will perform under certain standard, non-real-world conditions and from this they will extrapolate whether a particular product has improved its performance as compared to previous versions or against other products OR how well the product has improved from one date to another, and the client will try to determine whether the product will or will not perform as expected in their particular application(s).

So why, Oh Why, can't the rulebase / BRMS vendors agree on at least one benchmark for performance of their products. Mostly it is fear that this will become the only basis for comparison of products.

This belief is based on past experience when a potential customer would use the published benchmarks of KBSC or other independent consultants to beat them across the head and shoulders so that the vendor would have to lower their price to get an order. (Actually, the vendor didn't have to lower the price but salesmen are notoriously weak-willed creatures who find it easier to sell on the basis of price alone without any consideration to customer needs and their ability to fulfill those needs.)

After all, one does not purchase a Corvette on the need for transportation, they purchase the Corvette because they like its looks and its performance. The same thing can be said for a Mercedes, Cadillac or pickup truck - they are purchased NOT on performance alone but also on a myriad of little factors that make up the overall buying experience.

All of that to say this: I think I'll have the new benchmarks ready for most rulebase / BRMS systems ready before September 15th this year and ready for publication. Right now we're going to use Waltz-50, WaltzDB-200 and the Manners128-2009 when loaded on Unix (Mac OS X), Windows XP (32 bit) and Windows 64 bit. That's a lot of work between now and then but with the help of some friends maybe I'll make it.

Watch this space for more news on benchmarks. BTW, the BEST benchmark (after reviewing the standard benchmarks) is to put the product on your system, use your data, use your process, use your rules and run your tests. Only then will you know for sure whether the potential product is suitable for your application(s).

Looking forward to seeing all of you at the October Rules Fest. Check out http://www.OctoberRulesFest.org for more details on the world class lineup of speakers and activities.

SDG

jco

Open Source Leeches

2009-06-03T10:35:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

InfoWorld ran an article this week on "Open Source Leeches" and it got some responses, one from Daniel Selman of IBM/ILOG. While the article is spot-on about some companies using Open Source software and keeping their own solutions secret in order to "get the jump" on their competition, it is decidedly UNFAIR to broadly paint all companies with the same swath using a really wide brush.

For example, IBM/ILOG contributes back to Eclipse. And the mentioned Southwest Airlines continually contributes back to the Drools project. Mark Proctor (Drools) is always commenting that "There is no such thing as a free lunch." His way of handling "leeches" is to just quit responding to their questions after a while.

My own thoughts here are that many companies either (1) don't NEED to make changes to the product and can use it right out of the box or (2) don't feel comfortable making changes to a vendor product. In the second case, that is normally the result is decades of using vendor products "as is" and only making suggestions.

So, maybe Dave Rosenberg (and Bill Snyder) need to research the "problem" more thoroughly and give us some facts and statistics. For example, how many companies are using Drools, Eclipse, JBoss, etc. for free. And, out of those companies, how many have made NO contributions to improve the product. I have a feeling that the "NO contributor" companies will be a really small percentage.

After all, the "spirit of community software" is NOT that you have everyone contributing to the product, but that you have a few really solid professionals leading the way for the newbies. Personally, I use lots of "free software" (Mark hates that expression) and rarely contribute to the effort - not because I don't want to but I would have to learn a whole new product each time. And I only have time for one or two "projects" in my life at one time. So, I use a lot of them and contribute to only a couple of them.

Again, folks need to get the facts straight before they leap to unsupportable conclusions.

SDG

jco

ORF 2009 Super Early Bird Discount Extension

2009-06-02T10:55:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

October Rules Fest 2009 has extended the Super Early Bird discount of 20% off of normal registration fees to midnight, June 6th, 2009. Regular registration is $500 so that represents $100 savings. If you have any questions, check out http://www.OctoberRulesFest.org for more info on speakers, agenda, etc. The hotel should be determined not later than Friday of this week, June 5th. Anyway, be SURE to register THIS WEEK to get the best savings. :-)

With parking at ANY hotel in downtown Dallas being astronomical (cheaper than New York, San Francisco, London or Paris though) it might be more economical to park-and-ride. There will be directions on the ORF web page at a later date about how to do that.

SDG
jco

October Rules Fest 2009

2009-05-28T07:29:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

Well, ORF 2009 is ready to rock and roll in downtown Dallas again, only this year the conference will be in the center of the downtown Dallas restaurant district rather than on the outskirts like last year. Just point your Google Earth to 1400 Commerce Street in downtown Dallas and you'll see what I mean. Everything from MacDonald's to The French Room to the "ultra cool" Fuse restaurant. After we check them out, the ORF web site have an ever-expanding list of top (not necessarily expensive) restaurants within a two- or three-block walking radius.

We won't have the same space as last year so, counting the 30+ speakers that we will have, there will be room for only about 170 attendees - first come first served. So, register early and you will still get your 20% discount. There is still no extra charge for tutorials if you are attending the conference and this year's tutorial have a great line up. As a matter of fact, the entire agenda is great. As you can see from the speaker bios those who are returning and the new speakers for this year are strictly "top drawer" - the best of the best.

If your company is interested in becoming a sponsor, contact info@OctoberRulesFest.org and let them know. Again, remember that there is room this year for only 170 attendees. Maybe 180, but that's about it. More on the hotel as it develops but it is down to a choice of only two really great hotels for the same price as last year - but more goodies.

So, register early and ensure that you have a great spot at the Second Annual October Rules Fest. Most of all, like last year, we're going to have FUN and we're going to enjoy ourselves.

SDG

jco

MacWorld is now iWorld

2009-05-13T12:42:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

Apple is finally showing its true colors: Green, as in the almighty dollar. Yes, you have to make money as a corporation otherwise you become a philantrophy and not a commercial organization.

So, what is the problem? The latest MacWorld came today. And there is NOTHING in there about the Mac computers EXCEPT in how to do movies or photos in the back. The rest is devoted to iPhone, iPod, iShuffle, and all of the other iCrap toys that Apple has foisted on the world of mindless teeny-boppers and drugged-up skateboarders.

Even the products page failed to mention the latest advance of the Nehalem processors for the Mac Pro - all that they mentioned was the Xeon Quad core that is several months out of date now. (I guess that the single article from last month on the Nehalem processor failed to catch the attention of the deely-boppers in the game room.) Ergo, my reasoning for calling it iWorld rather than MacWorld.

OK. I'm an old dude who just doesn't get it, right? Probably. But Apple's foundation is (was) computers, not toys. They seem to have forgotten who brought them to the party. If they are going to degenerate into a world of i-R-Us then I'll have to find another Unix hardware provider. And, no, Linux is not a good substitute. Linux is for Windows-haters who don't have the bollocks to do real, hard-core Unix. (You know, I think all of this started when Steve Jobs decided to use Intel consumer junk for the CPU rather than the more advanced, more stable Power PC of the former Mac Pro.)

SDG

jco

Rulebase Benchmarks 2009

2009-05-04T17:17:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

It is beginning to look like Miss Manners 2009 might (just might, not will) be a good benchmark for checking rules. The other will be the WaltzDB-200. I will be depending on vendors to double check all of my rules for them on that one since the database is generated from WaltzDB.java file that puts it into the "expected" format for the rules. (Thanks to Dr. Forgy for re-writing the WaltzyDB.c file into Java for OPSJ but it can be extended to any rulebase needed.)

Georrrey De Smet has made some changes to the original (hastily done) data file and has blogged about it http://blog.athico.com/2009/05/miss-manners-2009-yet-another-drools.html in case you want to read his blog as well.

SDG

jco

In Memory of Bubba the Rules Cat

2009-03-24T18:40:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

For those who knew him, Bubba the Rules Cat (aka, Richard Halsey) was one of the more interesting folks in the rulebase space. I worked on a couple of projects with him; Ericsson for 18 months and GMAC Insurance for another five or six. Whatever the subject of conversation during the day, Bubba rarely watched TV and would spend the evening hours researching arkane and little-know facts and technology. The next morning he had several sites for our consideration. He was one of the very best researchers that I have had the privilege of knowing. And he had a low tolerance for fools and bad products.

Bubba was 68 years old. He was born June 14, 1942 and died "suddenly" on January 17, 2009. He loved his mother and his wife, Wanda with a deep affection. He spent six years in the Air Force with tours in Germany and South Africa and attended the University of Central Florida.

In his local community he was called "The Mayor of Vizcaya" - maybe due to his efforts in organizing a home owners association and he was later elected the president of that group. The HOA put a plaque in his honor at the base of a pear tree that he planted there.

I remember when we were working in St. Louis and staying at the same motel he got up early every morning, ate breakfast, went outside to smoke and feed the birds. He told me that his mother always wanted to come back as a bird so if she made it he was going to be sure and bring her breakfast every morning.

Bubba wanted to be cremated and buried next to his mother so when he died Wanda did just that. They had a memorial service in Pensacola and then his brother, Jim, took his ashes to New Jersey for another service and to be buried there.

Quite a guy. He lived a full life. He and I used to chat at least once a month about various and sundry things and I will sorely miss those calls. I do know that the last few years (he retired for all practical purposes a few years ago) were probably the happiest that I have known him to be. He quit smoking about the time he retired but he still had his two (or sometimes three) Cuba Libras every day - one at lunch, a nap, a long walk on the beach, and then a couple of more. He had a specific method for making them using only the best rum and only smooth-skinned limes. They really were quite good.

So - Bon Voyage Richard. We'll miss you. But I'm looking forward to seeing you again one day. :-)

SDG

jco

IBM/ILOG in Health Care - NY Times

2009-03-22T14:35:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

Well, it had to happen. The Doctor Will B.R.M.S. you now is an article that appeared in the NY Times. It does give a good shot-in-the-arm to the industry as a whole and ILOG in particular. There's also an article on Google in the health industry that is interesting reading. I only hope that someone there actually read the MYCIN book before starting out on this project. What's new is old and what's old is new.

MYCIN was done in the late 70's and early 80's by the uber-geeks at Stanford in CA and CMU in PA. And it did a good job. Back then nobody trusted computers so they didn't use it in diagnosis even though it did a better job than did the doctors. Today, maybe it will have a better chance.

SDG

jco

Rulebase Benchmarks 2009

2009-03-22T02:48:00.000-05:00

Greetings:

In concert with certain other "technical" persons in this field (Dr. Forgy, Gary Riley, et al) I would like to propose a new-and-improved benchmark for rulebased systems. Waltz and WaltzDB are still valid benchmarks but, unfortunately, most folks (read: programmers) have trouble visualizing the lines of logic that would help move lines from a 2D drawing to a 3D drawing. This is elementary for a "normal" engineer because they have had to endure Mechanical Engineering 101, aka Drafting Class.

I was "privileged" to see some recent emails from a "Benchmark" consortium and the vendors (surprise of surprises) did not like the Waltz nor the WaltzDB benchmarks because they were not "real world." First, the vendors have not defined what is a "real world" and second, since when was a benchmark "real world"?? The "real world" of most vendors these days is composed of financial problems that, while they are sometimes quite large, are never complex. (Think Abstract Algebra or Partial Differential Equation level of "complexity.")

WHY would we need a rulebase that can handle both massive numbers of rules and objects as well as very complex rules? Think about Homeland Security where there are thousands of Ports of Entry (POE) as well as perhaps a million travelers every day and millions of cargo boxes being shipped into the USA. The database query alone could take days when you have only a few minutes to determine (1) does a threat exist and (2) what is the level of that threat? An automobile of a specific nature parked too long in one place (think OKC) could be a "clue" on the threat level. A new object of a certain type on a roadway (think IED) is a potential threat in some areas but not in others.

One person from Saudi might not be (most likely is not) a threat. But knowing that he/she is related to another person of the same village entering at another port combined with another person of the same village either already here or entering from another port might quite possibly raise the threat level. (Meaning, what are the odds of three persons from the same, small village in Saudi Arabia entering the USA over a one, two or three day period?) These decisions sometimes have to be done within seconds while a person is standing at the counter - not hours later when that same person has been passed through and disappears into the local population.

Think of what happens in health underwriting when the things that must be considered are many and related. For example, a bad back (or knee or foot or whatever) could lead to declining health and possible heart attack depending on the severity of the injury. A heart attack could lead to even more declining health and death. Family history can and does play a huge part in underwriting. For example, being overweight means a potential increased risk in diabetes. If most everyone in the family has had diabetes (of either type) then the risks escalate. Having a family history of heart problems as well makes the problem even riskier. This is a large and complex problem that needs fast resolution. Assuming, of course, that the data are available in the first place. The reasoning process here is (can be) extremely complex and most times the human underwriter is the only person who can make that kind of determination when a rulebase would be a much better approach.

Fraud detection is a complex issue that is normally addressed from a superficial viewpoint rather than something "in depth" that might be reasonably accurate. Some of the issues of fraud detection (or homeland security or underwriting) could be handled with Rule-Based Forecasting (RBF) system as well as possibly linking the rulebase with Neural Networks to help predict what will happen. It has been shown (back in 1989) that neural net was much better at forecasting a time-dependent series than even the far more popular Box-Jenkins method of analysis and forecasting. It isn't much good at non-temporal situations but that's another story.

Let us return to our primary discussion of what should compose a rulebase benchmark. A rulebase benchmark should be composed of several tests:

Forward Chaining
Backward Chaining
Non-Monotonicity
Complex Rules
Rules with a high level of Specificity
Lots of (maybe 100 or more) "simple" rules that chain between themselves
Stress the conflict resolution strategy
Stress pattern matching

Just having an overwhelming amount of data is not sufficient for a rulebase benchmark - that would be more in line with a test of the database efficiency and/or the available memory. Further, it has been "proven" over time that compiling rules into Java code or into C++ code (something that vendors call "sequential rules") is much faster than using the inference engine. True, and it should be. After all, most inference engines are based in Java or C++ code and the rules are merely an extension, another layer of abstraction, if you will. But sequential rules do not have the flexibility of the engine and, in most cases, have to be "manually" arranged so that they fire in the correct order. An inference engine, being non-monotonic, does not have that restriction.

Simply put, most rulebased systems cannot pass muster on the simple WaltzDB-16 benchmark. We now have a WaltzDB-200 test should they want to try something more massive.

New Benchmarks: Perhaps we should try some of the NP-hard problems - that would eliminate most of the "also ran" tools. Also, perhaps we should be checking on the "flexibility" of a rulebase by processing on multiple platforms (not just Windows) as well as checking performance and scalability on multiple processors; perhaps 4, 8 or 16 (or more) CPU machines. An 8/16 CPU Mac is now available at a reasonable price as is the i7 Intel (basically 4/8 cores) CPU. But these are 64-bit CPUs and some rule engines are not supported for 64-bit platforms. Sad, but true. Some won't even run on Unix but only on LInux. Again, sad, but true.

So, any ideas? I'm thinking that someone, somewhere has a better suggestion than 64-Queens or Sudoku. Hopefully...

SDG
jco

Benchmarks 2009

2009-03-21T10:21:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

In concert with certain other "technical" persons in this field (Dr. Forgy, Gary Riley, et al) I would like to propose a new-and-improved benchmark for rulebased systems. Waltz and WaltzDB are still valid benchmarks but, unfortunately, most folks (read: programmers) have trouble visualizing the lines that would help move from a 2D drawing to a 3D drawing. This is elementary for a real engineer because they have had to endure Mechanical Engineering 101, aka Drafting Class.

I was "privileged" to see some recent emails from a "Benchmark" consortium and the vendors (surprise of surprises) did not like the Waltz nor the WaltzDB benchmarks because they were not "real world." First, they have not defined what is a "real world" and second, since when was a benchmark "real world"?? The "real world" of most vendors these days is composed of financial problems that, while they are sometimes quite large, are never complex. (Think Abstract Algebra or Partial Differential Equation level of "complex.")

WHY would we need a rulebase that can handle both massive and complex? Think about Homeland Security where there are thousands of Ports of Entry (POE) as well as perhaps a million travelers every day and millions of cargo boxes being shipped into the USA. The database query alone could take days when you have only a few minutes to determine (1) does a threat exist and (2) what is the level of that threat? An automobile of a specific nature parked too long in one place could be a "clue" on the threat level. A new object of a certain type on a roadway is a potential threat in some areas but not in others.

One person from Saudi might not be (most likely is not) a threat. But knowing that he/she is related to another person of the same village entering at another port combined with another person of the same village either already here or entering from another port definitely raises the threat level. (Meaning, what are the odds of three persons from the same village entering the USA over a one, two or three day period?) These decisions sometimes have to be done within seconds while a person is standing at the counter - not hours later when that same person has been passed through and disappears into the local population.

Think of what happens in health underwriting when the things that must be considered are many and related. For example, a bad back (or knee or foot or whatever) could lead to declining health and possible heart attack depending on the severity of the injury. A heart attack could lead to even more declining health and death. Family history can and does play a huge part in underwriting. For example, being overweight means a potential increased risk in diabetes. If everyone in the family has had diabetes (of either type) then the risks escalate. Having a family history of heart problems as well makes the problem even riskier. This is a large and complex problem that needs fast resolution. Assuming, of course, that the data are available in the first place. The reasoning process here is (can be) extremely complex and most times the human underwriter is the only person who can make that kind of determination when a rulebase would be a much better approach.

Fraud detection is a complex issue that is normally addressed from a superficial viewpoint rather than something "in depth" that might be reasonably accurate. Some of the issues of fraud detection (or homeland security or underwriting) could be handled with Rule-Based Forecasting (RBF) system as well as possibly linking the rulebase with Neural Networks to help predict what will happen. It has been shown (back in 1989) that neural net was much better at forecasting a time-dependent series than even the far more popular Box-Jenkins method of analysis and forecasting.

But, I digress. Let us return to our primary discussion of what should compose a rulebase benchmark. A rulebase benchmark should be composed of several tests:

Forward Chaining
Backward Chaining
Non-Monotonicity
Complex Rules
Rules with a high level of Specificity
Lots of (maybe 100 or more) "simple" rules that chain between themselves

Just having an overwhelming amount of data is not sufficient for a rulebase benchmark - that would be more in line with a test of the database efficiency and/or the available memory. Further, it has been "proven" over time that compiling rules into Java code or into C++ code (something that vendors call "sequential rules") is much faster than using the inference engine. True, and it should be. After all, most inference engines are based in Java or C++ code and the rules are merely an extension. But sequential rules do not have the flexibility of the engine and, in most cases, have to be "manually" arranged so that they fire in the correct order. An inference engine, being non-monotonic, does not have that restriction.

Simply put, most rulebased systems cannot pass muster on the simple WaltzDB-16 benchmark. We now have a WaltzDB-200 test should they want to try something more massive.

New Benchmarks: Perhaps we should try some of the NP-hard problems - that would eliminate most of the "also ran" tools. Also, perhaps we should be checking on the "flexibility" of a rulebase by processing on multiple platforms (not just Windows) as well as checking performance and scalability on multiple processors; perhaps 4, 8 or 16 (or more) CPU machines. An 8/16 CPU Mac is now available at a reasonable price as is the i7 Intel (basically 4/8 cores) CPU. But these are 64-bit CPUs and some rule engines are not supported for 64-bit platforms. Sad, but true. Some won't even run on Unix but only on Linux or only on Windows. Again, sad, but true.

Anyway, the next blog on ORF 2009 will be about Ms. Manners - the new version where we don't tell you HOW to solve the problem (we don't give you the rules) but you have to get the right answer. Probably, in order to get the "right" answer we will have to provide the data. Unless, of course, some kind vendor would find a college intern to do that. :-)

SDG
jco

A Rare Retraction

2009-03-16T18:23:00.002-05:00

Greetings:

OK. I was wrong. Visual Rules is NOT a spreadsheet-looking development GUI but rather more of a modeling environment. My upcoming article in InfoWorld (hopefully, next week or the week after) will more than demonstrate that. Their GUI is one of the coolest in the industry eclipsed only by (maybe) Haley Expert Rules (not Haley Office Rules.) There! I reviewed the product in July of 2008 and again in December 2008 but somehow (old age? Nahhh - I've always been like this.) I lumped it in with Corticon and other spreadsheet-looking GUI environments.

OK, I blogged the error. Now I've blogged the retraction. Sorry, David K.

SDG
jco

Ladder Logic Relays, Computers and MYCIN

2009-03-15T13:29:00.005-05:00

Greetings:

If you have a sufficient mass of grey hair (or should that be "gray hair") you might remember "Ladder Logic" that was used for relays (those electro-mechanical monstrosities long, long ago) that were used in order to control machines in the dark ages before solid-state, ladder-logic that came to be called a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) as popularized by both Square D and Allen-Bradley companies. A good view of this kind of logic is available on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ladder_diagram.png if you would like to see it.

Today's spreadsheets and decision tables are about as archaic as that particular concept and serve basically the same function.

IF this is true AND this is true AND this is true

THEN do that

How simple. Just like Ladder Logic. Yet, when many of these IF-THEN rules are strung together, how complex they swiftly seem to become. (Not really - but the human brain cannot usually do more than four or five things at once.) So, we bunch them up and put them in groups to make it simpler for the simple minds of humans. And we are left with simple solutions for simple minds.

But, think about it... What is happening is not very complex. To move just ONE STEP toward complexity consider what the group of MYCIN did; they implemented the concept of "probability of belief and disbelief" into the rule as well as some other statistical concepts and nobody has EVER gone back to that concept since it is too complicated for the simple minds of most "computer scientists" - those minions to whom we trust our programming today. If you can obtain the book by Buchannan and Shorliffe on the MYCIN project, GET IT, READ IT, UNDERSTAND IT !!

Then, after you read it and understand it, let's move beyond MYCIN. What if we integrate rulebased systems and neural nets? What if we integrate digital computers and analog computers? (Typical response to that one is: "Tried it. Failed. Not possible.") Cyc (Doug Lenat's huge, monstrous, immensely complicated 'real' KnowledgeBased System to be completed in 2025) may or may not be the answer, but surely we can move toward something in between the brain-dead, incredibly simplistic BRMS that are out there and immensely complex Cyc Project. Any ideas?

SDG

jco

Why Can't The English Teach Their Children How to Speak?

2009-03-14T19:20:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

English is the language spoken (usually very poorly) around the world. But there are some countries where English should be spoken and written properly. (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Canada.) It's the national language of India and Pakistan but you could not tell this from the language spoken or written there. While in London and Southampton for long periods I was determined to develop a true British accent. The problem was that not one person there spoke like the other one. Finally, I gave up and decided that speaking properly with a decent mid-western-USA accent was far better than ANY of those terrible dialects. Even if it does have slight Texas twang. :-)

What set me off this time was the phrase from a fairly popular blog, "Is the data flat?" Data are plural, Datum is singular. So the sentence should read, "Are the data flat?" It could read, "Is the data structure flat?" or "Is the structure of the data flat?" Agenda (plural) is a list of agendum (singular).

The other one drives me nuts is when someone says, "Me and Bob are going to lunch. Want to go?" It should be, "Bob and I are going to lunch." What about where someone uses "were" for "we're" going to do something. Or ending a sentence in a preposition as in, "Where are you going to?" when "Where are you going?" is sufficient. Or the infamous, "What did you do that for?" The most egregious of all, "You need to get aholt of the data." OUCH! Get a hold on the data? Even that is terrible.

What about the spoken variety? Such as using "git" rather than "get." Or using "caint" (rhymes with paint) for "can't", which rhymes with pant. Or saying, "O'tel" rather than "Hotel". I had the ignomious displeasure of listening to a linguist preach today - but she used the most terrible English when I KNOW that she fully knows how to speak properly - she was either heavily influenced by her congregation or her surrounding growing up and just never got out of improper usage of the English language. (She speaks and writes about 10 or 12 languages fairly fluently.)

I'm reminded every day of the musical "My Fair Lady" in which Professor Higgins asks the eternal question, "What can't the English teach their children how to speak?" If you haven't seen it, check it out of your local DVD store and at least watch the opening song by Rex Harrison. "The way an Englishman speaks absolutely classifies him From the moment an Englishman speaks he makes some other Englishman despise him." (Also from the movie and that song.)

So brush up on your English by reading something of quality. Shakespeare comes to mind. Or the bible. Get out of the code books for a while. STOP reading all of the infernal, terrible documentation produced by someone in another country - or even in our own English-speaking countries when it was written by some dim-witted, High School Dropouts!

SDG

jco

Corticon and Tibco

2009-03-14T14:30:00.005-05:00

Greetings:

There is a link called "The Orange Mile" [takeoff on "The Green Mile" ?] that published a "review" of Corticon as used with Tibco. They were even less impressed than I was when I reviewed Corticon several years ago - about 2006 or so. The link to the Orange Mile article is at http://orangemile.blogspot.com/2008/06/corticon-rule-engine-review.html so you can read it for yourself. I could not find an author's name or homebase link so it must be anonymous or something. The link to my article is at http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/07/07/28TCcorticon_1.html if you would like to read the original broohaha.

Corticon calls what they do DETI, or Design Time Inferencing. The math that they claim to be part of the optimization process is doubtful since they don't show you what they do. ("Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." - Wizard of Oz) That being said, what they do is basically static and, to my way of thinking, not a flexible as a true rulebased system.

On the other hand, you must consider that ILOG, FICO, and others now have sequential rules that are nothing more than what Corticon is doing. Even the "Decision Tables" by FICO, ILOG and Drools are extremely similar to Corticon in that each row is a rule that is static as well. True, the row (rule) is processed by the rule engine BUT it's still pretty much a static process. FICO has just recently introduced a "gap analysis" tool that Corticon has had for years.

Visual Rules and VisiRules are code generators, Visual Rules from a spreadsheet and VisiRules from a model driven process. They, too, are static processes. Visual Rules generates plain-jane Java code while VisiRules generates a high-level processor for Prolog.

Being a purist, I prefer a "real" inference engine that can deal with anomalies and incomplete rules and does have some kind of Conflict Resolution Strategy - as has been mentioned and discussed in other blogs at this link. This is the BEST way to handle complex logic, incomplete rules and anything that might require thinking.

On the other hand, if ALL that you are doing is processing straight "out of the procedure book" business logic, why would you NEED and inference engine???? The answer is obvious: You don't. They may as well use a spreadsheet and get it over with as easily as possible. And, so long as you don't have over a few hundred rules in each set, it should work quite well.

All of that being said, why be critical of a company who is doing the same thing to the rulebase industry as the others except they don't have the fall-back position of a real inference engine should they need it? They (ILOG, FICO et al) gave their "stamp of approval" to the bastardization of the rulebase industry when they started down the Decision Table, Decision Tree, Compiled Sequential route a long time ago. Now that somebody is giving them the "come-uppance" that they deserve, they begin to whine like a mule. It makes you want to gag at the gall and hypocrisy of it the "Big Four" vendors.

SDG

jco

Are Business Users "Dummies?"

2009-03-12T12:54:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

In almost every enterprise organization to which I am called for consulting, there is a HUGE rift between the business analysts (who firmly believe that IT is a closed society and that they are keeping everything a secret - AND the Business Analysts want control over their own logic, meaning the rules) and the IT (who are just as firmly convinced that the business analysts are idiots and can not be trusted with writing rules.) Cooperation seems to be something that only 98-pound weaklings engage in while whining about how the world mistreats them. Simply put, all of this garbage HAS to stop.

All of this mistrust is, of course, built on decades of mainframe culture in which "users" were not programmers but pretty much the folks who had to pay the bills for whatever IT decided to do - and IT sure as heck wasn't telling anyone the inner secrets of their domain. It was all about "empire building" and control.

And I have seen situations where the business users actually got their grubby little paws on a rule engine (Advisor, JRules, whatever) and were told by the marketeers (ie, sales persons of dubious parentage) that they did not need IT. And they believed it.

Bottom line: The company suffers and gets wrapped up into internal "politics" of who gets to do what. The whole mess is totally disgusting!! IT needs to let go of the rules of business and let the business folks take control of (and therefore the verification and responsibility for) the business rules. By doing so this would remove the "impedance mismatch" between the two organizations. After all, IT has enough on its plate just getting the proper architecture for the rules, setting up the J2EE or EJB part of the project, getting the data straightened out and verified, writing new GUI screens, etc.

I actually went through the MBA program (a long time ago, admittedly) but even then the business guys knew how to do partial differential equations, abstract algebra, constraint-based programming and they were really, really good at doing spreadsheets and documentation. FAR better than what IT guys were doing who usually completed introduction to basic calculus and, if pressed, could use the spreadsheet and/or word processor almost as good as their departmental secretary - meaning, rather poorly.

Before you accuse me of being a business "geek" remember that my degree was in Electrical / Electronic Engineering with a focus on Microwaves and Computers. Before that I spent 10 years in the trenches as an ET doing long-range radar, S-Band radar, VHS radar, etc. etc. So, I was trained as a "Dilbert" and grew into the MBA stuff.

I know both sides of the fence and I know it well and I am saying that both the IT and the Business Departments need to grow up, quit acting like spoiled brats and learn how to share. Until that happens, neither side wins and both (meaning the company itself) will probably lose considerable resources to their incessant squabbling and whining. Times are hard and we don't have the luxury to fight among ourselves any longer.

So, like any marriage, IT must learn how to cooperate with the other side. Even when you don't understand the "why" question answers. Accept it that the business guys HAVE to think positively and that they really believe that everything will turn out wonderfully well. And the business guys must understand the need for structure upon which IT will insist - they have been burned many times by not considering the worst thing that could happen.

Now, go back to work and do something for the company BEFORE you think about your own department or group!!!!

SDG

jco

2009-03-09T17:53:00.003-05:00

Greetings:

I have added a new signature to my "normal" quotes from the Bard of Avon. This one is especially applicable to today.

"NOW do you believe?" (Morpheus to Trinity in "The Matrix")
Buy USA FIRST ! Then the manufacturers and congress will follow the lead of those whom there were supposed to be leading!

Maybe, just maybe, this myth of a "World Economy" will be proven to be as false as those who propagated it for their own economic gain. There is an old expression: "Charity begins at home." Well, so does buying and selling. You can start by frequenting those businesses in your OWN home town. If you can't get it there, then check out neighboring cities. The best deal for you, for me, for all of us, is to buy from our neighbors and friends rather than from some unknown in another town or country - even if it is a few dollars (or cents) cheaper.

If WE start, the the manufacturers will follow. Once they are in like, our own whores, the politicians, will follow like blind sheep. It has always been thus; the leaders will follow those whom they are supposed t lead.

SDG

jco

Drools Adds"Command Design Pattern" Calls to Version 5

2009-03-09T13:37:00.004-05:00

Greetings:

Well, version 5 isn't even out the door good before Mark begins adding things. Check out http://rafb.net/p/DTK56i23.html for his latest example code. What he's is doing is trying to have the same code for statefull or stateless session for system calls to Java. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_pattern for more info. Checking out the lines with Mark:

l. 61: This if for doing an insert. It marshals the XML into a Batch Execution Command.

l. 88: This means that it will return the BatchExecutionResults which supports full marshalling back to XML of the results.

l. 519: Shows how a pipeline works. it is a Unit Test and the String makes it more readable. I prefer StringBuffer but Mark says that I'm old and should be using StringBuilder now. Oh, well.

l. 113 shows how you would insert a set of elements.

l. 293 is what Mark calls "the money part" of the dual state machine

l. 307 is where they created a batch command to insert the four kinds of cheese. Also, notice that they specify two queries which are viewable on lines 297 and 301.

So, what does that mean for ordinary Joe the plumber? Well, the queries have an identifier where they can have their results added to the BatchExecutionResults. Also, when executing a batch (shell script to us Unix geeks) you can get back specific facts or globals via an 'out" attribute. Also, you can execute queries and have the results as part of the same BatchExecutionResults.

With a stateless session (because the session is tossed after the execution) you now get a single shot execute that will work with statefull or stateless.

Anyway, most of this is Mark's words via iChat late last night so I hope it's all correct. But, you might want to check it out anyway.

The link above will probably disappear shortly but here are some more along the same lines that should be more permanent:

https://hudson.jboss.org/hudson/job/drools/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/trunk/target/javadocs/stable/drools-api/org/drools/runtime/help/BatchExecutionHelper.html

https://hudson.jboss.org/hudson/job/drools/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/trunk/target/javadocs/stable/drools-api/org/drools/runtime/pipeline/PipelineFactory.html

https://hudson.jboss.org/hudson/job/drools/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/trunk/target/javadocs/stable/drools-api/org/drools/command/CommandFactory.html

SDG

jco

Free PDF of Red Book on WebSphere

2009-03-07T14:33:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

A good friend of mine, Colin Renouf (Senior geek/techie at Lloyds Bank in London) has written a few Red Book (IBM stuff) on WebSphere. You can download them for free at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247347.html?Open if you're into that kind of thing. Personally, Colin is one of the bright spots in the UK and I highly recommend his work to anyone interested. Enjoy...

SDG

jco

New Algorithm From Dr. Forgy

2009-02-09T09:56:00.004-06:00

Greetings:

Yes, that's right, folks. Dr. Forgy is working on a new algorithm that, as Diana (his wife who is also a computer programmer from CMU) puts it, "Blows the old Rete 2 / Rete III algorithm right out of the water." No, it is not ready yet. There are still several parts to work out and it may not be completed until the end of the year.

I talked with Dr. Forgy yesterday afternoon about that (and some other things) and he gave me permission to disclose it. He said that the new algorithm (as yet unnamed) should be about 10 times faster (hopefully) than the Rete 2 / Rete III Algorithm. And, the really cool part is that he will be discussing this at the October Rules Fest. What he will discuss and how much will be revealed is still to be determined since it won't be finished (again, hopefully) until the end of summer, just before the October Rules Fest.

The name? He doesn't have one yet. I suggested CLiF Algorithm (his initials are CLF) but he thought that was too much ego and, if you have ever met the man, he has a small ego and is a totally "nice guy" - something unusual in our day and time. But, having given away the original Rete Algorithm (it was his Ph.D. thesis done under a DoD grant) I think that he would like to retain the license on this one and have some kind of royalty for the use of it. As you may or may not know, Rete 2 / Rete III is licensed ONLY to Fair Isaac under his agreements when FIC bought Rules Power way back when.

Bottom line: (1) New Algorithm from Dr. Forgy. (2) Dr. Forgy will be discussing this at October Rules Fest this year. (3) The new algorithm "blows Rete 2 out of the water". :-) (4) The new ORF 2009 site will be up and running this week so that you can register early and take advantage of the "Early Bird" discount.

SDG

jco

4-CPU Laptop and 32-Gig thumb Drive: Cheap!!

2009-02-06T14:54:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

Some time ago I blogged about a Toshiba and a Dell laptop with 4 CPUs for about $5,000. Now Fry's (mostly in CA and TX) has an HP, Intel Q9000 Core-2-Quad laptop for only $1699. It includes:

18.4" Screen, 1920x1080p HD Quality

NVidia GeForce 9600M with 512MB of Video RAM

4 GB of RAM

500 GB internal HD

Light Scribe Blue-Ray ROM and DVD Reader/Writer

Altec Lansing Dolby Home Theatre speakers w/Sub Woofer

HP Webcam and Microphone built in

Intel WiFi link and Bluetooth

Part Number Xq8-1180us #5807463

Almost makes me what to change sides in the Mac vs Windows war.

Since my Macbook Pro has only 150 GB HD and it's about 90% full I need to carry around an external HD now to off-load my picture from iPhoto. Solution: Patriot 32GB thumb drive for only $44.99 after the mail-in rebate that you never get for some obscure reason. But, even so, it's EVER so much easier than carting around the external HD that you cannot hook up on an airplane without a lot of hassle.

I might even have enough room for my iTunes music on the thumb drive as well. Ain't technology just grand? :-) I can't wait for my Palm Pilot Treo to die so I can get an iPhone. But, just throwing it away when it is still working would be against my religion.

SDG

jco

Rules or Code ????

2009-01-13T11:09:00.004-06:00

Greetings:

Currently there is a bit of discussion on some of the developer groups as to, "Why not use scripting languages rather than a rulebase?" Good question and it deserves an answer.

One of the problems with rules is that those "outside" the rulebase community have little idea of what belongs in a rulebase and what does not. Nor do they have any idea of what constitutes a BRMS or a rulebase. So, before we run off and begin suggesting that folks use Java Script (or something equally mundane) to contain the rules, perhaps we should examine WHY we are developing a rulebase (and tacking a BRMS interface on top of it) in the first place. What follows will probably be elementary to most but maybe it will remind us of what it is that we are trying to accomplish.

A rulebase has been around since the late 1950's with Newell and Simon's Logic Theorist that preceded even the moniker of "AI". See https://www.rulelab.net/ for more discussion on this. A rulebase initially was to allow psychologists and programmers to try and solve a sticky problem when all of the rules were not known and so that there would not have to be a certain order of rule insertion into a program to be sure that one rule would not fire before another. They called this declarative programming and it is significantly different to all other languages such as BASIC, COBOL, Algol, FORTRAN, C, C++, Java and all of the scripting languages. They were trying to figure out how the brain works when is has a problem with conflicting rules and overriding rules and developed a system where the rulebase literally "chews" on the rules until there are no more rules to execute.

But, the question still remains, "What is a rule?" Or, as our business brethren put it, "What is a business rule?" More importantly, perhaps we should ask, "What is NOT a rule?" First, it is not data validation, even though I have used a rulebase (JRules) to do that very thing so that the business analysts could create, change and/or modify the rules without having to explain to the IT guys WHY this was true. (Shame on me for having been a party to such a venture but it paid the bills for 18 months.) I have a potential client now who has 10K+ so-called "rules" that are nothing more than data validation and they don't have any idea of what is a rule for a rulebase and what is a rule for Java/C++. No clue.

Another time that you should NOT use a rulebase is when you have to begin inserting more that three levels of priority. This alone indicates that the underlying problem is procedural in nature rather than declarative. I have seen so-called rulebased programs with as many a nine levels of priority. What this indicates is either ignorance on the part of the developer or lazy programming. This is much like the infamous "goto" statement in BASIC and other languages - yes, you CAN do it but it is NOT good programming. Just so with priority - use rule sets or rule flow (which I dearly hate but it seems to be a necessary evil) rather than so many levels of priority. (I prefer goal-oriented programming to rulesets but, in the end, it's pretty much the same thing.)

A BRMS, on the other hand, is nothing more than a cool interface and lots of toys to make the rulebase more appealing to the business guys. Remember them? The are the ones with the money who will buy our toys for us to solve their petty problems that could have been solved using any of the procedural languages. However, this does move 100% of the verification of the rulebase over into the business world where it belongs and allows the IT guys to go about their business of J2EE, database problems, web design and things of that nature.

But, and here's the crucial part: What is a valid case for using a rulebase? According to Girratano and Riley way back in 1998 (and they haven't changed much since then) the following are all guidelines for using a rulebase:

Can the problem be solved more effectively using conventional programming?
Is the domain well-bounded?
Is there a need and a desire for an expert system?
Is there at least one human expert who is willing to cooperate?
Can the expert explain his/her logic so that it is programmable?
Is the problem solution mainly heuristic or uncertain?

If these questions can not be answered, "Yes." (with the exception of the fist one) then probably you do not have a rulebase problem but rather a Java/C++/Scripting problem. If most can be answered, "Yes." then and one or two are "No." then you should carefully examine the potential hazards with using a rulebase.

You know, most businesses projects that I have had over the years, with a couple of notable exceptions, usually came straight out of the company manuals and NOT from domain experts. Who wrote the rules and WHY they wrote the rules was unknown for the most part. All the business guys usually know is that their competition is using a rulebased system for solving their problems and their business guys are getting to use a rulebase to do it so we have to do it as well. And the rationale that they use to justify such a solution is oftentimes amazing.

Whatever you do, have fun. You will have times when a client just insists on using a $1M+ rulebase to just keep track of rules that would be better suited to SQL or scripting. (Maybe their golfing buddy sells those things?) To keep your ethics in line, point out all of the obvious reasons for NOT using a rulebase and if the client insists on misusing a rulebase, take the money and run. :-)

SDG
jco

Benchmarks 2009

2008-12-29T14:51:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

As is my wont (don't you just love Old English?) I will be running my annual "First Quarter - No Quarter Given" benchmarks beginning in January of 2009. Right now I'm limited to existing benchmarks of Waltz-50, WaltzDB-16 (almost all Rete-engine vendors) and some of them for the WaltzDB-200, a new version of WaltzDB-16 but using 200 variations rather than 16 - that should prove interesting.

Also, the platforms will be limited to Mac OS X running on a Dual G5 with 4GB of RAM and a Core2Duo running with 3GB of RAM. I have beefed up the Windows-32bit XP (Dual Threaded single CPU) machine to 3GB of RAM just to be able to run certain software that is incompatible with either Mac (Unix) or Windows Vitria-64-bit OS on i7 CPU.

IF, and let me emphasize the IF, I can get the time I will have benchmarks for Decision Table (only?) engines with a 10K and 100K Telecom Benchmark that will do nothing more than show off processing power of single-row data validation. So far, the DT vendors have not been very helpful in coming up with a benchmark of their own this past year so I pretty much label all of the a 5 in terms of performance - meaning that it's neither good nor bad; pretty much an unknown. Mostly because my editor won't all me to give them a zero. :-)

Also, we might do some of what Peter Lin and/or Mark Proctor suggested in the way of "micro-benchmarks" that would remove any level of cheating. If we throw in Gary Riley's Sudoku and/or the 64-Queens problem, we'll have something else that is not actually business related but will give some indication of engine performance.

The benchmarks will be

1. Waltz-50
2. WaltzDB-16
3. WaltzDB-200
4. 10K Telecom
5. 100K Telecom
6. MicroBenchmarks
7. Sudoku
8. 64-Queens

The classes of vendors will be

1. Rete-based engines, internal objects (CLIPS (?), JRules, Advisor, Jess, Drools, etc.)
2. Rete-based engines, external objects (CLIPS, JRules, Advisor, Jess, Drools, etc.)
2. Compiled Java Engines (Visual Rules, OPSJ, JRules, Advisor, Drools, etc.)
3. Sequential Compiled Java Engines (Visual Rules, JRules, Advisor, Drools(?), et al)
4. Decision Table Vendors (Corticon, Visual Rules, Haley Office System, VisiRules, etc. but could include JRules, Advisor and Drools)

Folks, that's a LOT of work for one little old Texas boy unless I can find someone independent to help AND if I can get some help from the vendors writing these benchmarks to be checked by myself and any independent help that I can get. If you want to help (and thereby ensure your name be placed with the other immortals of rulebase benchmarking) send me your name and we'll get you started.

Remember, to help with the overall project, you MUST be independent and NOT working for any of the vendors that are being tested. (You can be working on any vendors project as long as you are being paid by the client and NOT by the vendor.) To help with the project from a vendor point of view, all I need is the code for all of the tests in the appropriate syntax for that vendor. I (we) still have to read it and verify that nobody cheated but that should be really helpful and will be duly noted in the tables that will be published.

Maybe, just maybe, (no agreement yet) InfoWorld or some other equally high-visibility journal will be willing to publish these benchmarks in the form of an article of some kind. Otherwise, it will be just another blog on benchmarks. :-)

SDG
jco

NON-Documentation

2008-12-16T16:05:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

Did you ever download a software package and start reading the Readme.txt or ReadMeFirst.html file to see how to install everything and then find out that it had not been changed recently? Or that you downloaded the Mac OS X version, installed the Mac OS X version only to find out that all of the instructions were for either Windows or Linux? OK, so Linux should be close, right? If it works, yes. If it doesn't work, wrong!

I just downloaded ILOG JRules Studio 6.7.2 Evaluation package. The instructions clearly state
=======================
To run Rule Studio do one of the following:

In Windows, use the shortcut: Start > All Programs > ILOG > ILOG JRules > ILOG Rule Studio for Java.
On Linux, start Eclipse using the executable in /studio
=======================

Nope. Not on Mac. There are some .app files there but they don't run on the Mac - maybe on Solaris or Linux, I wouldn't know since I usually do everything on a Mac or, sometimes, Windows. So, you have to find the build.xml file, read through it, and see if you can modify it so that you can make it run on the Mac properly.

And, remember all of those older files that you had to run under JRules? Forget it. You may as well rewrite all of that stuff using the "New and Improved" Eclipse interface. (Personally, I like writing my rules with a text editor but even the old BAL was kind of nice.)

Have you read through the Drools documentation recently? I really like Mark Proctor, Edson Terelli and the rest of the Drools guys - and I like the product - but they write what HAS to be the worst documentation in the industry. BUT, now that they are moving into "Big Boy" territory of BRMS tools (Advisor, jRules, etc.) Red Hat needs to hire a team of "real" Technical Writers to come in and help with writing proper documentation. I certainly hope that they do something soon or the only people using Drools will be the ones who can use the rulebase engine only and forget any of the ancillary bells and whistles that they have spent the past eight to twelve months adding to Drools.

I guess that the best documentation that I have seen is (forgive me for plugging an ex-employer) is the Fair Isaac stuff. Good docs that (usually) agree with the current version and is easy to use. Visual Rules docs are probably a close second. I've never had the privilege of using Haley Expert Rules so I can't say about them. I did look at Haley Office Rules but wasn't overly impressed with their documentation. ILOG JRules (the purchased version) documents used to be on a par with FIC but recently they have tried to go the "El Cheapo" route and skimp on that end of the product.

Anyway, before you DO happen to download the Studio, go to the chat room and see all of the problems that they are having with this "freebie" that they are putting out for six-month evaluation. THEN, if you still want it, at least you have been forewarned.

SDG
jco

Bringing RuleBased Forecasting (RBF) to 2009

2008-12-15T16:50:00.003-06:00

Greetings:

We have started an Expert Systems Consulting Group over at http://ExSCG.blogspot.com and, for now, the leadoff topic is that of RuleBased Forecasting. If you would like to work on this, drop by the blog and check in. If you want to blog on that link, let me know and I'll add you to the list of bloggers there. If you want to work on the project, drop me a email and I'll see how we can distribute the load so that all can be involved. Don't worry, there's lots to do but we have a few weeks to get started. :-)

SDG
jco

Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession

2008-12-14T16:28:00.002-06:00

Greetings:

I ran across this today because one the members of another blog had joined and put that organization down as something to which he belonged. I went over and read over the charter and the pledge. I would that everyone would pledge to abide by the moral and ethical conventions that are espoused there. I fear, however, that some my have joined just to be joining - much like some folks just join the church because their spouse joined - a desire to fit with their contemporaries.

Regardless, check it out. If you think that you can live with the pledge, I encourage you to agree to abide by the by laws and the pledge agreement.

http://caeap.org/default.aspx

SDG
jco

Name Changes

2008-12-13T11:33:00.004-06:00

Greetings:

As a follow-up to the previous blog, Rolando Hernandez has changed his blog from BRxG to an even higher level, Agility Alliance ( AA) that encompasses BRxG. He has put up a framework for lots of different groups for other to blog. I encourage you to visit there but don't forget the Expert Systems Consulting Group. One (AA) has more of a business focus and slant while the other (ExSCG) is more of a technical gathering without the pictures and Google Ads. Both have a purpose in life and, I suppose, that AA will blossom with members while ExSCG will grow more slowly but should be far more technical. It just depends on what you want out of life. :-)

SDG
jco

Too Many Blogs?

2008-12-11T17:55:00.004-06:00

Greetings:

A friend of mine was hesitant to start up another blog on BRMS since I have two (this one, which is my "personal" blog and Expert Systems Consulting blog at http://exscg.blogspot.com/ which encourages other experienced consultants to blog there on common subjects.) My immediate answer is NO! But, what we could do is to promote all of the other blogs on AI, Rulebased Systems, Rulebased Forecasting, Neural Nets, Constraint Programming, Complex Event Processing, specific vendor blogs, etc. What this will do is to make everyone aware that there is more than one way to skin a cat - or any other animal.

But here's the thing - most blogs allow you to post links to other blogs and some, like BlogSpot, allow you to include a short snipped of the latest blog and when the last blog there was written. If done in this manner then the reader can determine which one to visit. After all, we don't have time to go hither, thither and yon to visit blogs that we have either seen before, that are two or three years old or that don't pique our interest.

So, WHY should anyone blog on the ExSCB above if they have their own blog? Because, unlike my private blog that accepts only comments on my own blog, this will allow that reader to respond with a blog that is "front and center" and either start another thread or comment that will catch you attention. If you read my private blog, you don't get to see some of the really astute comments that others have made.

So, while I like for readers to follow what is happening on my blog, I really encourage readers to visit (what I hope will be) a much better blog that takes in the opinions of everyone. Blogs might replace meetings, which is what Rolando is trying to do with BRxG blog at http://brexperts.ning.com/ by putting in slides, video, several SIGs, and is focused more on the Business side of rulebased systems; the CxO guys and Technical Managers.

SDG
jco

Complex Event Processing

2008-11-28T19:10:00.003-06:00

Greetings:

Carole-Ann Berlioz-Matignon started another small fire storm on her blog about Complex Event Processing. In running the rabbit trails of I did find another blog on CEP by Tim Bass of Tibco that seems to take a more academic approach to CEP that uses lots of pictures, paragraphs of polysyllabic words and phrases that take some time to read. Charles Young, he of UK fame, even chimed in with his usual lucid and erudite thoughts. I did read through the blogs and now I'm pretty sure that no one has a really good grasp on a definitive answer to, "What is CEP?"

I think my FIRST comment is that neither CEP nor Rulebased Systems nor Neural Nets are "Business" only pursuits, although Fair Isaac, ILOG, Tibco, IBM, Microsoft and others are desperately trying to force everything computer-related into their own pre-defined concept of how that particular tool might be effected in the business world while relegating the rest of the world (physics, chemistry, geology, psychology, medicine, electronics, forecasting, analytics, etc, etc.) to non-essential importance. They will deny it, of course, but, nevertheless, their actions cry much louder than their words. If it cannot be forced into their world of business applications then it does not deserve consideration.

Back to the matter at hand: Wikipedia defines a CEP as "... primarily an event processing concept that deal with the task of processing multiple events with the goal of identifying the meaningful events within within the event cloud. CEP employs techniques such as detection of complex patterns of many events, event correlation and abstraction, event hierarchies, and relationships between events such as causality, membership, and timing, and event-driven processes." By it's very name, it is an Event - not something static - and it is Complex in that there MUST be something that about the event(s) that makes it not easily solvable or analyzed.

Since the definition seems to be getting in the way, let's say what it is NOT. It is not:

Simple
Time comparisons (only)
Rules (only)
Processes (only)
Neural Net (only)
Necessarily Distributed

So, now that we (OK, just me) have said what it is NOT maybe we can say what it might be. (This part is what is open for discussion.) How about this? "A Complex Event is any event in time that is composed of multiple facts - whether static or dynamic - or events the outcome of which defy ordinary logic and the outcome is solvable according to either rules or neural networks and the same set of facts and events always have the same resultant process." Or something like that. What a CEP is NOT is BRMS, an inference process (only) nor any one set of things that would constrain the solution.

For example, forecasting is an extremely complex process wherein only the short term can be predicted with any degree of accuracy. If any financial forecasting package could predict the future within 5% within the next 12 months then the owner would make a small fortune. You just can't know everything about everything. Personally, my goal is that between now and October Rules Fest for 2009 I will have made some kind of significant progress on a commercially viable forecasting package. If nothing else, my goal of understanding exactly HOW to do event-driven-rule-constrained-forecasting will be better.

SDG

jco

ORF 2009 Blog

2008-11-27T13:44:00.002-06:00

ORF 2009 has it's own blog now at http://ORF2009.blogspot.com - please pay a visit because that's where we will be organizing everything for the next October Rules Fest. Thanks,

SDG

jco

Drools 5.0 M3 is Available

2008-11-21T19:54:00.003-06:00

Drools 5.0 M3 is out and they are getting close to a general release. But there is a TON of work to be done on the documentation that is out of synch with anything including M2 and probably M1, especially on the BRMS. On the other hand, they are spreading out so five different fronts at one time - this is a MASSIVE undertaking to do with five full-time people and a handful of part-time contributors. Check out http://www.drools.org to get the download, documentation (such as it is) and check out what is going to be the future of share-ware BRMS. (Note: BRMS by the traditional definition is NOT the same as defined by Drools.) But, overall, they are closer and closer to what Fair Isaac and ILOG are putting out. If you rank Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor and ILOG JRules as about a 8, 9 or 10, then Drools would be about a 5 with a bullet. At their present rate of development, they will catch them (but only if the Big Two stand still) in a couple of years.

SDG

jco

Modern Times

2008-11-21T18:38:00.003-06:00

Greetings:

Taking time out from product evaluations just to go into idle gear and read some stuff that's been stacking up since last spring sometime. So, here we go:

Self-Healing Carbon Fiber applications: Did you happen to see the latest movie on Batman - Batman Begins? Did you wonder where Hollywood gets those wacky ideas? Some are not so wacky. It seems that that fiber already exists. There's an article about it in Spectrum, (Oct 2008, p.28) the IEEE magazine that all members receive, called, "Self-Healing Hulls" and it's mostly about self-healing boat/auto/airplane bodies made from carbon fiber. But, from the description it sounds exactly how Batman's wings operated when they "snapped" in to place. Wow!

Multi-Core Processors: Same magazine, page 15. SAVE YOUR MONEY!! A report by Sandia Labs says that a 4-core CPU will deliver almost as much speed as an 8-core CPU. But both deliver more than a 2-, 16-, 32- or 64-CPU machine. (They didn't say HOW they tested, but, hey! It's the IEEE combined with Sandia Labs - yes, those labs of Jess fame - so they have to be correct. Right?) A 2-CPU machine is on a par with a 16-CPU machine. The fastest was the 8-core but not by much over the 4-core. Now, remember, they are checking the speed on only ONE application, not lots of applications nor those requiring lots of threads such as Parallel Rulebased Systems. But for most rulebased systems, a single application should run fine on 4- or 8-core machines. If you have 64 or 128 cores, have the other cores working on something else, like a database access or screen updates (which really should have their own processors and memory) or doing complicated math routines. Sandia Labs, in conjunction with Oak Ridge Labs in Tennessee, are experimenting with stacking memory directly on top of the CPU.

Toshiba Quad-Core Laptop: Yes, you read that correctly. QUAD-core on a Laptop. Called the Qosmio (Kos'-mi-o) it weighs in at 10.8 pounds (about 5Kg) it's a monster. But, on the up side it comes WITH

4GB RAM
2x250GB HDD
1066MHz Front Side Bus
512MB NVidia Graphics 9600 Video
18.4" WS, 1680x945 Display
Built-in Camera with Microphone
Blue Tooth and Wireless Built-in
$1549.99 USD

OK, it's heavy, it's more expensive than most laptops today but cheaper than my 17" MacBook Pro, Core-2 Duo Apple. Unfortunately, it also comes with Microsoft Windows Vitri 64-bit OS. But, guys! - it has FOUR CORES on a LAPTOP!! See Toshiba for more info.

Thanksgiving USA: Finally, Thanksgiving in the USA is next Thursday. Students and teachers in the USA take the entire week off. Factories shut down Wednesday noon, sometimes the whole week. Department stores get ready for "Black Friday" by shutting down on Thursday, stocking up and having sales that start as early as midnight Thursday but usually at 6:00 a.m. on Friday morning. And the lines begin forming right after midnight but are already formed by 5:00 a.m.

The question is, who are YOU going to thank for what you have? Even if you are unemployed, you have access to an internet connection or you wouldn't be reading this. But, the question remains: Who do you thank? Yourself? Now, that's being silly. Mom and Dad for making you what you are? Good start. The government? No, WAY, Jack!! Go back to the original Thanksgiving day and see what they did and why on Wikipedia entry on Thanksgiving. While you're there, look up Squanto, the Pilgrims and their reasons for forming, migration to Amsterdam, their eventual voyage to what would become New England, the Mayflower Compact, their incredibly poor planning that led them to become dependent on Squanto, etc, etc. All very interesting...

SDG

jco