






Jess in Action 120
Jess in Action | |
author | Ernest Friedman-Hill |
pages | 480 |
publisher | Manning Publications |
rating | 9 |
reviewer | Simon P. Chappell, Eric Kaun |
ISBN | 1930110898 |
summary | Introduces rules and declarative programming style using JESS. |
Eric Kaun's review, continued
Jess in Action starts with an introduction to rule-based systems, goes through the basics of the Jess language, and then dives into the examples; the appendices include API references to both Jess functions and Jess's Java APIs, and numerous links and references are scattered throughout the book. If I have any complaint about the organization, it's that the book could have been even more example-driven, abandoning (or shortening) the chapter on syntax and basic functions and introducing them only when used in an example; the rest could have been left to the appendix of Jess functions.The book is interesting and readable, but dense with concepts, so it contains only 388 pages of actual text, and 50 pages of appendices will take some (well-spent) time to get through. A second skimming impressed me anew with the richness of the material, and the productive way in which it's presented, so I recommend reading the book once to get the overall feel, and then going through it again with the working Jess command shell, editor, and command line in front of you. Or an IDE if you must. :-)
Jess itself consists of a rule language, a runtime engine which supports forward and limited backward-chaining, and APIs for integration with Java; there are many add-on tools for Jess, referenced throughout the book. As with most rules engines, rules are specified as declarative patterns, not procedural code.
Jess in Action is well worth your time and attention, at the least for its exploration of rules, and at most for presenting a strong, flexible platform to tackle what is probably one of the uglier parts of your development process: the sequencing and parameterization of business decisions. Although the list of Cons below is longer, they're just nit-picking; this is an excellent, entertaining, and productive read that will likely expand your programming horizons considerably.
Pros- Clearly, concisely, and entertainingly written for Java programmers of any background
- A strong introduction to two important topics: rules and declarative programming style
- Well-chosen and developed working examples, each with a different design style
- The description of the author's unit test framework for rules in Appendix C is a nice touch
- Early discussion of Jess syntax focuses too much on Java-like procedural style
- More of a tutorial - not long enough to be a good reference (though that would probably require a detailed Jess Patterns book)
- Discussions of development methodology and knowledge engineering are unnecessary, as they're covered better elsewhere and a short summary adds little to the book
- There's no single list of rule and Jess-related links; references to tools and discussions are scattered throughout the book
- There are no general references to rules and rule-based systems for theory and background
Simon P. Chappell's review
While part one of the book has two slim chapters to introduce rule-based systems to the casual reader, the rest of the book is a no-messing user guide, reference manual and tutorial on using Jess. If you want to learn about rule-based systems, this should not be your first book. If you know of rule-based systems and have decided to use Jess, then run, don't walk to the bookstore and purchase a copy of this book.I liked the solid, yet gentle, progression through part two, where the basics of using Jess are explained. The explanations were clear and each concept was introduced in a sequence that built upon the previous concepts and information. For example, I had thought that rules were all you had to worry about in rules-based systems, but it turns out that because rules operate on facts, designing the representation of those facts is a pre-condition of designing rules. (Right, I know you knew that, but it was new to me! :-)
Parts three through six are complete case-studies of the application of Jess in increasingly complex applications. The examples are well-explained and the rationale for each step is discussed in sufficient detail to educate but not bore.
Part seven is a self-described 'grab bag' of stuff that didn't fit in any of the other parts of the book. This section spends some time looking at using XML with JESS, including markup languages for rules, and interfacing with Jess from EJBs and Application Servers.
Lastly, there's the fact that the author of the book is also the author of the software in question. Dr. Friedman-Hill obviously knows Jess better than anyone else in the world and this shows through in the way that he not only explains how to achieve activities in and with Jess, but he also takes time, here and there, to explain some of the design decisions and trade-offs in its creation.
You can purchase Jess in Action from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the (recently updated) book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Jess (Score:2, Interesting)
To me this says that O'Reilly's methods for writing programming books is favoured to other styles. Personally, I love how O'Relly's PHP Cookbook does just what this reviewer is looking for. You get a problem, a solu
Re:Jess (Score:2, Insightful)
As libraries get big (as they certainly have in Java), it gets harder to find what you're looking for in them. A big prob
Re:Jess (Score:2)
There's this thing with Java... It's meant for big things. It is really irritating and a lot of hard work to make something small with Java. However, it's relatively not much more work to make something bigger.
If you want to log something to a file or so, simply print some debug statements, and you don't want to fight the system, setup Log4J. Make all the config files, instantiate the objects, etc, etc. For a small program that's a lot of work. For a huge program, it's the same amount of work :-) And then
Re:Jess (Score:1, Funny)
-- Robert Sewell
Re:Jess (Score:2)
What Jess is good for (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What Jess is good for (Score:1)
Re:What Jess is good for (Score:2)
Here's a couple to get you started
- Ada [adahome.com]
- Perl [perl.com]
Re:What Jess is good for (Score:1)
Neat declarative language (qsort in one short line, and readable to boot!), but crippled by the designers insistance that he controlled all development and distribution.
Re:What Jess is good for (Score:1)
Re:What Jess is good for (Score:1)
Re:What Jess is good for (Score:2)
There's a quiz about this (Score:2, Interesting)
'based on the Chapter 13, "Adding a graphical interface," of the book Jess in Action published by Manning Publications Company. Test your knowledge of Jess, the rule engine and scripting language for Java technology.'
licensing -- Jess *not* open source (Score:5, Informative)
Jess is and will always be available at no cost for academic use worldwide, with an appropriate license. Commercial users can purchase a Jess license by contacting Craig Smith at Sandia's Technology Transfer office (Telephone 925/294-3358; email: casmith@sandia.gov.) The licensing fees are negotiable and generally quite reasonable. You can also purchase an inexpensive "Home Office" license. Jess is not licensed under the GPL, the LPGL, the BSD license, or any other free software or open source license. Redistribution of the Jess source code under any free software or open source license is prohibited.
since when is /. open-source only? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:since when is /. open-source only? (Score:1)
I have a real hard time using any proprietary language or toolkits in the "general purpose" world, I'm sure many do. It doesn't have to be "open-source" (C and C++ aren't technically "open source"), but I would only use proprietary languages/toolkits if I absolutely had to because the boss made me or the situation dem
FOIA does not make it open source (Score:1, Funny)
Re:FOIA does not make it open source (Score:2)
If it was actually made by the US Government, it can't be covered by copyright (see http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html [copyright.gov]) The reason it is set up that way, even if it isn't nearly as apparent now, is that it is our government. If they are creating works, they are doing so on our behalf, and we should be the recipients. Copyright has the work-for-hire concept, where an employees work is owned by the employer. For government works, we are the employer.
The exception, or perhaps loophole, depending on y
Re:FOIA (Score:2, Insightful)
CLIPS Expert System [ghg.net]
As for your tax dollars, forget it - you'll never see them again if they go into SNL. It's sad to see NASA build a great system and released it for free, then see Sandia copy it (how imaginative) and try to sell you a license for it.
Re:licensing -- Jess *not* open source (Score:1)
I see.. (Score:4, Insightful)
And without bias, I'm sure. =P
How does bias factor in? (Score:2)
Re:How does bias factor in? (Score:2)
Not necessarily. For example, if a critic of Jess were the author, you might see passges like, "Although Jess *technically* has support for X, the current implementation is some-what of a cludge, and may cause problems with Y, etc...", whereas a proponent of the language may say "Jess was designed from the start with support for X and blah, blah.."
You will almost *always* have bias in any
Re:How does bias factor in? (Score:2)
if a critic of Jess were the author
[/quote]
if that were true, the book probably wouldn't have been published.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Searching for this. (Score:2)
But seriously... I'm guess that your hits on Jess in Action are more interesting and insightful! Nothing like a bit of grass-roots study to confirm what this reviewer is saying, eh?
Re:Searching for this. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Searching for this. (Score:1, Funny)
What's even funnier is that the link is Slashdotted now :)
Re:Searching for this. (Score:2)
Ah, thank God for those little URL "hints". There's *one* search I won't be recommending to my boss anytime soon, at least in an office context!
Cool... (Score:3, Funny)
Pardon my curmudgeonry.
Re:Cool... (Score:1)
Jess is actually new stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
Jess is a rete-based rule engine, but the implementors have done a lot of work on the innards of rete network processing and have made serious order-of-magnitude improvements in matching speed.
{snipe}
They had to - Jess would have been too slow relative to rule engines in native-compiled languages otherwise.
{/snipe}
Seriously, Jess is a real improvement over ancient and revered rule engines like CLIPS. You can find out more about Jess by going straight to the sources at Sandia Labs here [sandia.gov].
Good book, but dense material (Score:4, Informative)
Rules technology is pretty powerful, but like everything else, you have to know what you're doing. The most common mistake is when a programmer tries to use rules engines in a procedural manner like VB. One area where rules engines are used in production systems is business process management, like processing insurance or handling loan approvals.
If you like Jess, check out Drools (Score:5, Informative)
Asmo
Re:If you like Jess, check out Drools (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:$5 cheaper and free shipping (Score:2)
informative (Score:1)
Also, did it occur to you that some people find pricing information informative, even if a referral link is used? (If you want amazon to keep that $1 commission instead of paying it out, go straight to amazon.com and don't click on the link. If you want that money yourself, sign up at associates.amazon.com. If you're boycotting Amazon, don't click and don't buy.)
Re:informative (Score:1)
Since your post has been modded down, apparently I'm not that dumb.
Re:$5 cheaper and free shipping (Score:1)
Rule Engine Frameworks (Score:2)
have any of the slashdotters used rule-based frameworks for real-life projects?
What do you think about Java Community Process Rule Engine JSR [jcp.org]?
What about frameworks that try to keep things simple, like Ruleaid [ruleaid.com]?
Re:Rule Engine Frameworks (Score:2)
Re:Rule Engine Frameworks (Score:2)
Re:Rule Engine Frameworks (Score:1)
Re:Rule Engine Frameworks (Score:1)
I am also planning on using JESS for the AI for a large Java-based online game I'm currently working on. I am really looking forward to using the backward-chaining capabilities of JESS for this.
I think JESS (and CLIPS) is best suited for fairly complex systems where you want to break out the rules separately and let non-
Re:Rule Engine Frameworks (Score:1)
Re:Rule Engine Frameworks (Score:2, Informative)
Too bad its Java (Score:2)
for the regular *nix environment.
Jess in action somewhat fustrating... (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now the jess.Defrule class does not expose enough public methods to properly create one outside of the jess package.
That's straight out of the latest Jess documentation [sandia.gov]. You can't construct rules from Java! Well, you can pass a text string to Rete.executeCommand, but this is hardly elegant. Grrr... Am I missing something here? If not, then PLEASE give me a constructor for Defrules, Mr. Friedman-Hill.
It's getting frustrating enough that I've been interested in an open-source alternative to Jess (academic license is no charge, but you have to pay for it for commercial use): drools [drools.org]. This has to be the dumbest project name ever, and I haven't even looked at much of the code yet, but it looks promising. Anybody have any experience with it? Please hold back your drool jokes for now...
Re:Jess in action somewhat fustrating... (Score:1)
The obvious "solution" (aka workaround) is to create your own local jess package and put your extension in that package. E.g. org.jess.rules is a local directory in your build tree and you can put your new Java rule classes in that package. When you compile your rules will be in the same package and the compilation will succeed.
I know, an ugly hack it is. But it will work until the class exposes public methods for extension.
Re:Jess in action somewhat fustrating... (Score:3, Informative)
A few months ago, we had to implement a rule-based system for our AI course, using Jess. Now, I'm all for CLISP-like syntax, but it's very annoying to actually get something working in Jess: the documentation on the site was incomplete and sketchy (had to discover how stuff worked the hard way, by breaking it) and also to me it seemed Jess wasn't even complete (defqueries were very messy, although using the java API should have proven better results. maybe). Our Mr. Friedma
Warcraft 3 (Score:1)
Less-restrictively licensed alternative (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Less-restrictively licensed alternative (Score:1, Informative)
BTW, DAML is being replaced by OWL, a W3C standard.
Nothing new - Better languages than Java for this (Score:1, Flamebait)
Implementing rule-based programming in Java is like putting lipstick on a pig (if you don't know, rule-based programming is the lipstick). It is best to leave rule processing to a language designed for it and use Java for other tasks for which its better suited, such as interaction.
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:1)
And despite the "cross-platform" compatibility of Java, few corporations use it to their financial benefit. (Please, no posts from individuals who have ported a Java app from one platform to another).
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:1)
And when I say server farm I mean several dozens of servers. And several hundred thousand lines of code.
Oh yeah - they also found a massive performance improvement switching from NT to Linux.
Almost forgot! They are using Blaze, which is a Java-based rules engine.
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:1)
despite the "cross-platform" compatibility of Java, few corporations use it to their financial benefit.
My reply showed how a large corporation is using the cross-platform compatibility of Java for financial benefit. This is not an example of an individual (me) porting a Java app. This is an example of an app requiring no porting, because it is already cross-platform compatible. The institution in question will save thousands of dollars: 44 servers * ~$3000/serve
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:1)
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:1)
Prolog is a back-chaining system (quite mature), JESS is mostly forward chaining (though I understand they can do back chaining too.).
My post was not about Prolog per se, but about the many Prolog- and Lisp-based rule engines available (A detailed aside: a forward-chaining rule engine can be written in Prolog easily).
The implementation language is unimportant. The fact that it runs on any platform, and its integration with Java for enterprise apps is important.
Funny that you say the implementation la
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:2)
You were formally trained in an age when computer science was still part of the science department and not the business trade school department. Your concepts of programming are thus founded in the logic and mathmatics behind the languages and "apps."
Modern programers who are in "Enterprise" computing aren't even going to understand a single word you say, nor are they likely
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:1)
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:1)
Why do you think Java is ill-suited for rule processing?
I didn't say that, but your statement is true: Java is ill-suited for rule-processing because there is no question that it cannot compete with languages designed for that purpose. Its a matter of what a language is suited for:
Re:Nothing new - Better languages than Java for th (Score:4, Insightful)
Why managers still insist we use JMS instead of Erlang or Jabber?
Why managers still insist we use EJB even when a single container is enough and no load-balancing required?
Why managers still insist we use Oracle for databases with 10 tables of 1000 records each 100 transactions a day?
Why managers still insist we use MS Exchange server when we don't use anything besides email from it (no tasks or calendars, no public folders)?
Why managers still insist we use ... wait a minute, now I know "why" - because of managers, they still have no brains in the head and no honesty in the heart. That's why.
Try Mandarax Open Source Rule Engine (Score:2, Informative)
Or try JEOPS Open Source Rule Engine (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Admitting ignorance (Score:2, Informative)
Problems with the rules-engine concept (Score:4, Informative)
Rules engines at best are competent beginners in a limited, structured domain. Discovering and programming the rules is a process requiring a very significant investment of time and effort, including both technical and business experts. "more difficult and important is the twofold task of knowledge acquisition: finding articulate, self-analytical experts who know why they do things, and developing efficient techniques for extracting what they know and distilling it into rule bases. The essential prerequisite for building an expert system is to have an expert." [objectz.com] In most cases, experts don't in fact use the rules that might be discovered by interview and reflection. Rules are always context free and cannot take into account the relevance of facts.
Rules engines can't handle exceptions that are not programmed in. Rules engines apply their rules ceteris paribus, assuming that everything not accounted for in the rules is constant, when if fact the unaccounted-for variables may in fact be the important ones. Expert human collaboration and judgment is required to correct and update rules engine errors.
The ongoing maintenance of rules is a significant effort and drain on resources. In a rapidly changing business, the value of the rules degrades rapidly without maintenance.
Deskilling of workers is a significant risk in heavy reliance on rules engines. As more business expertise becomes embodied in the rules engine, the ability of the workers to understand the domain becomes less.
Recommended readings include:
Non-free (Score:2)
Prolog & Java (Score:2)
JavaLog [unicen.edu.ar]
More Links [kobe-u.ac.jp]
CLIPS (Score:2)
I think the licensing issues are annoying enough - I could get an academic license as I teach at a university, but when (a while back while I was "under" employed) I tried to get a version so I could do some experiments (I wanted to try using it as a bit of support software for a volunteer organization even) and maybe use it in classes at some future point and discovered the licensing was going to make that imp
Other rules engine books or papers? (Score:2)
Nasty Rete Blackboard vs. Ranking (Score:5, Interesting)
The attractive promise of declarative rule-based systems is that each "fact" (base or implicational) in the problem domain can be stated as a rule. But this is hardly the case in Rete based systems.
The Rete algorithm was designed to efficiently implement the non-monotonic forward chaining "blackboard" paradigm. A Rete inference system has a "blackboard" of facts that a large number of rules monitor, and when the some facts on the blackboard match the condition of a rule, the rule can fire and add information to the blackboard (monotonic) or change or delete information from the blackboard (non-monotonic). The main conceptual issue in this sort of system is what to do when the blackboard satisfies more than one rule. The problem is that firing one rule may change the blackboard so that another rule that could have fired can no longer do so. So Rete ranks the applicability or rules.
Thus a blackboard system winds up with rules whose meaning is not just contained in a rule but has to be inferred from all of the other rules that might be fired by similar input conditions. Most Rete based applications I've looked at wind up using the blackboard to essentially implement program counters to control program flow. And in general, adding a new rule may generate new solutions but it also may break prior solutions.
Pure monotonic systems (with forward and/or backward chaining) are conceptually very easy to analyze because all of the "facts" are truly independent.
One can add a form of non-monotonic behavior to monotonic systems by ranking their solutions. E.g. a monotonic system generates N solutions but ranking via some ordering prunes these down to say 1 or 2 best solutions. This external ranking is non-monotonic because adding new facts to the monotonic part may result in different "best" solutions.
So, basically I am advocating an inference system which is conceptually defined as results = rank(infer(facts, data)). If these functions have good mathematical definitions then it may be possible to implement their combination so that ranking controls or happens during the inference process but the results look as if it was external, and thus one avoids the computational horror of over-generation by the "infer" function.
Rete however explicitly and globally performs the ranking process during inference and an arbitrary Rete rule set is probably NP complete to analyze. But maybe a good implementation of a conceptual separation of "rank" and "infer" could be realized by a Rete-like network.
What a rating! (Score:2)
(For those that didn't look it's rated 1930110898)
Re:Rating (Score:2)
No, that's the rating. It's a *really* good book!
Re:Rating (Score:2)
Cheers,
Ernest Friedman-Hill