ORF 2009 and the Dartmouth Conference

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

2008 Bossie Awards

Greetings:

Still about as hot as Hell's Back Porch here in Texas but here's some "News You Can Use" - not the normal fluff. InfoWorld recently announced it's Best Open Source (egro, BOSsie) awards for 2008 - the whole thing is at http://www.infoworld.com/archives/t.jsp?N=s&V=107881 were you can check your favorite category. Naturally, I was interested in the best rulebased system (BRMS, if you must) aware that is at http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2008/08/166-best_of_open_so-6.html for those who care to read the blurb on Drools. There is another interesting one just before that at http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2008/08/166-best_of_open_so-5.html that deals with Parallel programming. If you are developing today and you want to be among the "elite" class of programmers, then you will have to learn how to program applications for parallel programming.

InfoWorld covered this in the same eLetter with an article at http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/3399854/121129892/130373/0/ that covers what and why you need to be able to program in threads in the coming world of programming. (Just when you had it all down, something else pops up - just like "Whack-A-Mole" at the fair.) True enough, you can trust the vendors to do this for you, but if you are developing your OWN software AND you hate J2EE because it took away threaded programming, now is the chance to get it back. Unfortunately, you'll have to pull out all of your old books on Java Threads and C++ threads and do your best to remember what all that did for you. But, and here is the kicker, if you do that and put in the necessary time and work, you will be among the best 1% of the best 1% of the world's best programmers, an even tighter niche that knowing rulebased systems. Hopefully, it will pay better but I'm not sure. More than likely you will have to write your own multi-threaded program (that probably won't be J2EE compliant) to make any money off this deal.

But, if you are a speed freak (like yours truly) then you probably will do it just for the fun of it. Major vendors will pooh-pooh the idea as being not practical or not really necessary ONLY because they don't want to re-architect and re-write their applications.

Congratulations to all 60 of the winners from a pool of more than 500 nominees this year. If you didn't make the list it may have been because InfoWorld was not aware of your product OR because your product is not true Open Source. (I found a couple of non-Open Source that made the list this year but not many.)

SDG
jco

Weekly Blogs

It's been said by those who have lots to say that if you have a blog then you shold blog daily. Some do it several times a day. I can't do that. But, I shall try (note the word "try") to do this weekly. And this blog technically counts as this weeks blog. :-)

Benchmarks: So, what has happened this week in the wonderful of Rulebased System benchmarks? Well, for one thing, the past week has been one of rapid-fire comments about benchmarks from Ming Lin (Traveloicity), Mark Proctor (Drools), Peter Lin (Independent Consultant), and Daniel Selman (ILOG). Not many other weighing in so I will see if I can get some time to run some of those benchmarks as well as fire up the old Telecom bencmarks. That should stoke the fires considerably.

New Things out and about rulebased systems: Versata has a new release 6.3.0. Visual Rules now runs with Eclipse. Paul Haley is still MIA - meaning we can not seem to find out where he finally settled down outside of Haley Systems. Mark Proctor et cie are at a Drools conference. Willie Hall (formerly Neuron Data, formerly Blaze Software, formerly Mind Box) has followed Johnathan Halprin and Marty Saulenas in the Mind Box exodus to Fair Isaac's green pastures. James Taylor (formerly at Fair Isaac) is now promoting Open Source - after a fashion. Jess has a new verison,7.0p2, out now. Have not heard much from ILOG on the official front recently except for news blurbs where they got this deal or signed that contract.

Open Source: Lots of different definitions here but, personally, I think that the Apache license is probably the most open of all and the one to which I, personally, subscribe. For example, I "could" (not that I would) take the source for Drools, rename everything and re-write the screens, and then call it "Texas Rules" - and it would be quite legal from what I have heard about the Apache license. Mark Proctor would know more about this than would I. Anyway, it seems quite neat and many companies are finding out that if they want to be in the software business rather than the banking busines (for example) that they can have their own proprietary version of most any Apache software - and re-sell it to their industry.

BTW, if any of you are in the insurance market, it seems that ACORD, http://www.acord.org , is THE company for de facto global e-commerce standards for insurance. This little company, pretty much unknown outside of insurance folks, was called to my attention by Daniel Brookshier who works for No Magic, an OO design company. He seems to think that they really are straight up and above board. Maybe we could have something like that for rulebased systems? But the customers would have to lead the charge on this one - not the vendors. Anyway, check it out and see what you think.

Next Week: We'll be talking about parallel rulebase systems and (maybe) statistical analysis of applications for the insurance industry that is based on the MYCIN work done back in the late 80's. Both interesting topics. And more on Benchmarks. I promise.

Meanwhile, remember, "To thine own self be true" is a nice thought - but being true to God is even more important. :-)

SDG
Yaakov

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
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