Talk:Production system

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It might be nice to add a list of production rule systems (besides OPS5) -- just an idea

I don't care.

I don't know if it makes sense to merge these, but if not it certainly does make sense to have them link to each other. expert system is the real mess!--Jaibe 21:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

Production system, Business rules engine, production system, inference engine, all those are basically the same notion, alll these articles needs to be merged in the same document, maybe we can have differents paragraphs for each, but they are basically the same thing--Kompere (talk) 14:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

They are not basically the same notion. Production systems are a family of methods that can be applied to various tasks (graphics for example, with L-Systems), business rules engines are one application of them. Business logic and inference engines can be implemented as a production system but need not be. The merge call is therefore not well founded. Merging production systems with business logic and inference engines would be like merging the entry on First Person Shooters with the entries on Quake Wars and OpenGL. --62.172.138.4 (talk) 12:15, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] production system outdated?

I have some questions about production systems and any knowledgeable advice would be welcome.
First, do production systems differ fundamentally from logical inferencing systems such as prolog (I get the impression that production systems resemble a cut-down and somewhat informal kind of logical inferencing)? I realise they are surely both turing complete but to rephrase the question into one of practicalities, is there any reason for me experiment with production systems if I'm already familiar with the prolog? Does one have a solid advantage over the other in certain situations?
Second, and possibly related to the first, are production systems particularly common these days? I understand that they had largely died out. I've heard that they were particularly difficult to program.
If the answer to the second point is yes then it might bear mentioning in the main article.
jan
Water pepper (talk) 23:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
updated Water pepper (talk) 18:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Opinions about the relationship between production systems and logic vary widely. For example, Herbert Simon in his article about production systems in the MIT Encyclopedia of cognitve science regards Prolog as a production system. However, Paul Thagard in his textbook "Mind: an introduction to cognitive science" regards production systems as very different from logic. On the other hand, Russel and Norvig in their AI textbook seem to view production systems as a combination of logic and forward reasoning.

Production systems have two characteristics that make them different from pure logic, the production system cycle and conflict resolution. Some people have argued that production systems can be regarded as forward reasoning with logic embedded in a cycle with conflict resolution. It can also be argued that many AI agent systems are extensions of production systems, in which condition-action rules are generalised to event-condition-plan rules. 90.241.218.220 (talk) 17:38, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for a solid answer, I do appreciate it.

If I may follow up, from a practical point of view, though, I don't know what the similarities and differences between logic and production systems actually mean when it comes to solving real-world problems. That only comes with experience so if I can draw on yours, if I know Prolog then would learning and gaining experience with production systems typically be worthwhile, or can I comfortably do with Prolog most types of things that a production system can do, and about as easily? This, too, may not have a simple answer but I'd value your opinion.

BTW I appreciate Prolog isn't the whole world of logic programming; in fact, as an aside if you know any other logical programming systems that you deem particularly interesting or practical, I'd appreciate a mention of those.

Water pepper (talk) 22:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a Prolog expert. But there is a large number of very good Prolog textbooks, and there are many sophisticated Prolog systems with libraries, which include support for programming in other paradigms, such as production systems, frames, object-orientation, as well as constraint programming. There is also a number of efficient systems for answer set programming, but the number of applications is limited. By comparison, there seems to be fewer textbooks for programming in production systems, and fewer implementations. Logperson (talk) 09:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)