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International Workshop on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web

RuleML 2012: Rules on the Web: Research and Applications pp 47–61Cite as

Formalizing Both Refraction-Based and Sequential Executions of Production Rule Programs

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 7438))

Abstract

Production systems are declarative, in that they do not explicitly specify the control flow. Yet, the concept of a production system does not include the definition of a given control strategy. The control between rules in a production rule program is, in practice, defined by each implementation of a production rule engine. Engines have traditionally been implemented using the Rete algorithm. Since the turn of the century, however, production systems have evolved into industrial products known as Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS). BRMS have introduced new compilation and execution schemes, which are often called sequential in contrast with the incremental behavior of Rete. This change in execution scheme came with a change in semantics for rule programs. In this paper, we propose a formal description of the execution of production rule programs. Existing descriptions either ignore the control strategy, or assume a Rete semantics. Ours isolates the handling of rule eligibility in the control strategy, which allows us to describe the sequential execution semantics of rule programs, as well as the Rete semantics, and others.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Informatik, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany

    Bruno Berstel-Da Silva

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  1. Bruno Berstel-Da Silva
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Studies, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, London, UK

    Antonis Bikakis

  2. Department of Databases and Information Systems, Brandenburg University of Technology at Cottbus, Walther Pauer Str. 2, 03046, Cottbus, Germany

    Adrian Giurca

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Berstel-Da Silva, B. (2012). Formalizing Both Refraction-Based and Sequential Executions of Production Rule Programs. In: Bikakis, A., Giurca, A. (eds) Rules on the Web: Research and Applications. RuleML 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7438. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32689-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32689-9_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32688-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32689-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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