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Feb 6 2009: Fair Isaac and ILOG Rules for COBOL.
Oct 20 2008: extracted from another article and expanded.

Every few years for the past 20 years, there has been an initiative to bring a higher level of information technology to the health care industry. It gives one a strong sense of having seen it all before.

Tons of interesting aritcles at the System and Software Engineering lab (SSEL) ... many need a bit of googling to find them all.

Many links can be found on the VUB Publications page. Also check out the thesises ... thesii ? ...

The general basis of many of the articles is Aspect Oriented Programming, but the focus at VUB is business rules and rule-based systems.

What were the major obstacles that delayed the adoption of rule-based systems as a mainstream technology for the first 15 years of it existence ?

• Lack of consistent focus on the problem domain - particularly lack of business focus the application was an example of technology rather than catriona

• Lack a rigorous methodology -

A brief explanation about the unwieldy structure of this document ( as notes to myself if no one else ).  The reader can skip this section by clicking on one of the links at the botton of the page.

This is the start of six sections devoted to the subject of rule-based systems. The sections started out as static HTML and are ( slowly ) being converted to the Drupal CMS, with extensive reorganization and revision. Frankly, this document has been difficult to write, for reasons described in "Defining Rule Based Systems".

Updated Sept 7 2008: Found new link to Diane Cook lecture notes ...

Rule Based Systems and Artificial Intelligence

One of the better and more accessible rule-based system links is the student notes for a course on AI given by Jocelyn Paine in 1996.

The Jocelyn Paine definition of rule-based systems:

It is interesting that the general view of rule-based systems as "rule-based expert systems" begs the question: is there such a thing as non-rule-based expert systems or rule-based non-expert systems ? I think the answer is yes.

For instance, the KBSC site mentions that the company "deals mostly with rulebased systems in the business world where they are sometimes referred to as Business Rule Management Systems, BRMS". In other words, rule-based non-expert systems, also know as business rules.

Oddly, this may be one of the best definitions of "rule-base system". It's when you do ....

Conventionally, rule-based systems are defined as or are closely associated with expert systems. But the usually ever-reliable Wikipedia mentions them only in the context of expert systems and that only in passing.  THe central definition of expert system is:

 From th RuleML site:

The participants of the RuleML Initiative constitute an open network of individuals and groups from both industry and academia. ... Our main objective is to provide a basis for an integrated rule-markup approach that will be beneficial to all involved and to the rule community at large.