Jess (programming language)

Jess
Developer(s)Sandia National Laboratories
Initial release1995; 29 years ago (1995)
Stable release
7.1p2 / November 5, 2008; 16 years ago (2008-11-05)
Written inJava
PlatformJava
LicenseProprietary, public domain
Websitewww.jessrules.com

Jess is a rule engine for the Java computing platform, written in the Java programming language. It was developed by Ernest Friedman-Hill of Sandia National Laboratories.[1] It is a superset of the CLIPS language.[1] It was first written in late 1995.[1] The language provides rule-based programming for the automation of an expert system, and is often termed as an expert system shell.[1] In recent years, intelligent agent systems have also developed, which depend on a similar ability.

Rather than a procedural paradigm, where one program has a loop that is activated only one time, the declarative paradigm used by Jess applies a set of rules to a set of facts continuously by a process named pattern matching. Rules can modify the set of facts, or can execute any Java code. It uses the Rete algorithm[1] to execute rules.

License

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The licensing for Jess is freeware for education and government use, and is proprietary software, needing a license, for commercial use. In contrast, CLIPS, which is the basis and starting code for Jess, is free and open-source software.

Code examples

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Code examples:

; is a comment  (bind ?x 100)  ; x = 100  (deffunction max (?a ?b)              (if (> ?a ?b) then ?a else ?b))  (deffacts myroom           (furniture chair)           (furniture table)           (furniture bed)           )  (deftemplate car              (slot color)              (slot mileage)              (slot value)              )  (assert (car (color red) (mileage 10000) (value 400))) 

Sample code:

(clear) (deftemplate blood-donor (slot name) (slot type)) (deffacts blood-bank ; put names & their types into [[working memory]]           (blood-donor (name "Alice")(type "A"))           (blood-donor (name "Agatha")(type "A"))           (blood-donor (name "Bob")(type "B"))           (blood-donor (name "Barbara")(type "B"))           (blood-donor (name "Jess")(type "AB"))           (blood-donor (name "Karen")(type "AB"))           (blood-donor (name "Onan")(type "O"))           (blood-donor (name "Osbert")(type "O"))           ) (defrule can-give-to-same-type-but-not-self ; handles A > A, B > B, O > O, AB > AB, but not N1 > N1          (blood-donor (name ?name)(type ?type))          (blood-donor (name ?name2)(type ?type2 &:(eq ?type ?type2) &: (neq ?name ?name2) ))          =>          (printout t ?name " can give blood to " ?name2 crlf)          ) (defrule O-gives-to-others-but-not-itself ; O to O cover in above rule          (blood-donor (name ?name)(type ?type &:(eq ?type "O")))          (blood-donor (name ?name2)(type ?type2 &: (neq ?type ?type2) &: (neq ?name ?name2) ))          =>          (printout t ?name " can give blood to " ?name2 crlf)          ) (defrule A-or-B-gives-to-AB ; case O gives to AB and AB gives to AB already dealt with          (blood-donor (name ?name)(type ?type &:(or (eq ?type "A") (eq ?type "B" ))))          (blood-donor (name ?name2)(type ?type2 &: (eq ?type2 "AB") &: (neq ?name ?name2) ))          =>          (printout t ?name " can give blood to " ?name2 crlf)          ) ;(watch all) (reset) (run) 

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Hemmer, Markus C. (2008). Expert Systems in Chemistry Research. CRC Press. pp. 47–48. ISBN 9781420053241. Retrieved March 30, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4200-5323-4

Further sources

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