Parallel Rulebase Systems

Whether you're doing a small rulebase (say, 200 rules or less), a medium (1K rules) or an enterprise system (20K rules) you should, as a Knowledge Engineer, be aware of all of those giants who have gone before; meaning that you should do some research into the mists of time. At a recent Business Rules Forum I heard several vendors say that they were investigating the problems associated with using parallel rulebased systems.

Well, a team of guys at CMU (Gupta, Forgy, Newell and Wedig) started solving this problem in 1984. Anoop Gupta (along with Charles Forgy and Allen Newell) finished that investigation in 1989 after Anoop got his Ph.D. and moved to Stanford. I guess that if you read the paper and put it in terms of today's computers, you "could" say the problem was solved. Gupta et al said that they could only get 10:1 improvement using parallel systems, but that seems good enough to at least start down that path, don't you?

SDG
Yaakov
Copyright (c) KBSC

Dr. Charles Forgy Heart Attack

As some of you may or may not know, Dr. Charles Forgy (inventor of the Rete / Rete 2 / Rete III Algorithms) suffered a severe coronary blockage on Thursday, November 10th, while attending the Business Rules Forum in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, he was in the waiting room of George Washington University Hospital and was rushed to the Cat Lab where they inserted a tube through his femoral artery up to his heart and cleared the blockage. As of yesterday he was still on breathing support and a heart pump and has been sedated to keep him quiet during this time. Most of his family are there with him - would that I could have stayed around as well.

So, if you are over 40 and have not had the radioactive stress test recently, DO IT!! Dr. Forgy had just had a physical exam a month before for insurance and they gave him a 10% reduction because he was in such great health. However, they did not do a stress test, only a cardiogram.

I will return periodically to try and update all of you as I get more information from his family or from his company. If you are a praying person, then pray for him. If you aren't a praying person, ask someone who is to pray for him. He is, to my knowledge, one of only a few remaining icons of the AI industry devoted to rulebased systems and research.

SDG
Yaakov
Copyright (c) KBSC