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Oct 21 2008: the Wikipedia entry for "Knowledge Technologies" deleted recently, we seem to be going backwards ...

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 -

New Definitions for 'Semantic Web Rule Based Systems' ?

Many of the potential obstacles to adoption of the Semantic Web are similar if not identical to the prbblems faced by rule-based systems in the late 1980s. Therefore, the business rules methodology may be a good guide for development of the Semantic Web.

First, some basic principles.

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".

Revised: Sept 25,2007

Modeling the Subject of "Rule-Based Systems"

Definitions can be seen assertions about relationship between well-defined terms, in other words things are defined in terms of other things. The terms and relationships associated with "rule-based systems" are ill-defined and make a rigorous definition nearly impossible to achieve.

Updated Oct 20 2008: new link

A really excellent example of what can be accomplished with a pragmatic approach to implementing RDF and Semantic Web applications, by Drs. Marwan Sabbouh and Joseph K. DeRosa at the Mitre Corporation. They use OWL ontologies to map between databases in three basic steps:

1. Express any software component’s formalism as an ontology,
2. Map the component’s ontology to the domain ontology, and thus
3. Integrate components at the semantic level without writing integration code.

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:

Note: the article needs updating.

The Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities project ( SIOC ) has revised their web site. The content is better organized, more accessible and interactive ( using the Drupal CMS by the way ). The one-page guides provide a quick introduction to SIOC.

From the document:

The OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) is intended to help solve these problems by defining a generic XML interchange format for business documents that can be extended to meet the requirements of particular industries. Specifically, UBL provides the following:

• A library of XML schemas for reusable data components such as “Address,” “Item,” and “Payment” — the common data elements of everyday business documents.

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• Visit Link - OASIS Universal Business Language