Re: JESS: Hello To Jess User Group and How Is Jess Doing?
Hi, I will abstain myself from discussing Drools specific features in this list, in respect to the other users and due to my involvement with the other project, but I can tell you that if your bias is towards Jess, go for it. As we all know it is an excellent engine, and if we look at the rules engine alone, the choice between Jess and Drools Expert IMHO is purely a matter of taste (syntax and API). The differences between the 2 products will be more salient when you start throwing into your analysis all other requirements, both functional and non-functional, for your use case, as well as looking at the ecosystem and other modules/products developed around them. Feel free to ask the Drools specific questions at the Drools mailing list. Community there is also very friendly and active. Cheers, Edson 2011/1/1 dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com: Thank's Edson. Will check it out. Drools seems to have come a long compared to when I last looked at it - given that you have a foot in both camps, any wisdom and guidance would much appreciated. My bias is towards Jess, perhaps since I got introduced to rules engines with the excellent Jess book but is it worth looking at Drools? I like the interactive 'protype'ability with Jess using the shell (still on 6.1). Does Drools have similar intractivity? We are developing using j jRuby (RoR) or Java. Thanks! On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Edson Tirelli ed.tire...@gmail.com wrote: May I suggest you take a look at Tohu? http://community.jboss.org/wiki/Tohu It is a small framework to do, it seems, exactly what you described. It is built on top of Drools, but even if you prefer to write your own framework on top of Jess, it can probably give you ideas for your own design. Need to say, though, that I never used it myself, so not sure how good/bad it is, but the video demo is nice. Lets not forget, even the Drools reference area (and JBoss Rules / Drools Developer Book) recommends you read: Jess in Action: Java Rule-based Systems It is an excellent book for people that want to learn about Rule-based Systems, so why not recommend it? :) Being a Drools developer, I can tell you that we always had a good relationship with the Jess community, and we have much more to gain by cooperating than competing. That is not to detract from one engine or the other, it is just the open source way of promoting innovation and education and building upwards from the shoulders of the giants that came first... :) Cheers and Happy New Year! Edson 2010/12/31 dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com: Perhaps a little, but not greatly. Am happy to hear. Jess was my first introduction to rules engines 4-5 years back but did not use it for a production system. Now we are looking to build a 'guided navigation' type of app using Jess where the rules determine what steps does a user need to do. I am really excited to be able to use a rules engine for that type of application; I am sure many of you have built similar things. Will keep you posted on questions/findings/lessons. Not having done real development for many years, I really enjoyed using the Jess shell (still v6, from the book) and actually build small prototypes with rules. Agree on the Drools making rules more accessible. On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Socrates Frangis soc.fran...@gmail.com wrote: Agree with Donald, were on holiday. Any impact from things like jBoss rules or other engines? -Perhaps a little, but not greatly. I will applaud Red Hat for exposing more and more people to rule engines through open source however. With that said, I think the many users of Jess stick with it due to it's maturity and 'rule engine features' as apposed to the convenient bundling of open source middle-ware. I have the feeling that many will get introduced to rule engines through Drools now, but when searching for something that gets the job done they will sway elsewhere. Lets not forget, even the Drools reference area (and JBoss Rules / Drools Developer Book) recommends you read: Jess in Action: Java Rule-based Systems On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:26 AM, dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com wrote: Rejoining the Jess community after a multi-year hiatus and notice that the mailing list has been very quiet. I am curious to see how Jess is doing now a days? Any impact from things like jBoss rules or other engines? Is the community still pretty active? Happy Holidays to everyone ! -- V/R -Socrates Frangis -Mathematician Software Engineer To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users y...@address.com' in the BODY of a message to majord...@sandia.gov, NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify owner-jess-us...@sandia.gov.
Re: JESS: Hello To Jess User Group and How Is Jess Doing?
edson is a member of drools team for those who don't know. On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 6:01 PM, dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com wrote: Thank's Edson. Will check it out. Drools seems to have come a long compared to when I last looked at it - given that you have a foot in both camps, any wisdom and guidance would much appreciated. My bias is towards Jess, perhaps since I got introduced to rules engines with the excellent Jess book but is it worth looking at Drools? I like the interactive 'protype'ability with Jess using the shell (still on 6.1). Does Drools have similar intractivity? We are developing using j jRuby (RoR) or Java. Thanks! On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Edson Tirelli ed.tire...@gmail.com wrote: May I suggest you take a look at Tohu? http://community.jboss.org/wiki/Tohu It is a small framework to do, it seems, exactly what you described. It is built on top of Drools, but even if you prefer to write your own framework on top of Jess, it can probably give you ideas for your own design. Need to say, though, that I never used it myself, so not sure how good/bad it is, but the video demo is nice. Lets not forget, even the Drools reference area (and JBoss Rules / Drools Developer Book) recommends you read: Jess in Action: Java Rule-based Systems It is an excellent book for people that want to learn about Rule-based Systems, so why not recommend it? :) Being a Drools developer, I can tell you that we always had a good relationship with the Jess community, and we have much more to gain by cooperating than competing. That is not to detract from one engine or the other, it is just the open source way of promoting innovation and education and building upwards from the shoulders of the giants that came first... :) Cheers and Happy New Year! Edson 2010/12/31 dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com: Perhaps a little, but not greatly. Am happy to hear. Jess was my first introduction to rules engines 4-5 years back but did not use it for a production system. Now we are looking to build a 'guided navigation' type of app using Jess where the rules determine what steps does a user need to do. I am really excited to be able to use a rules engine for that type of application; I am sure many of you have built similar things. Will keep you posted on questions/findings/lessons. Not having done real development for many years, I really enjoyed using the Jess shell (still v6, from the book) and actually build small prototypes with rules. Agree on the Drools making rules more accessible. On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Socrates Frangis soc.fran...@gmail.com wrote: Agree with Donald, were on holiday. Any impact from things like jBoss rules or other engines? -Perhaps a little, but not greatly. I will applaud Red Hat for exposing more and more people to rule engines through open source however. With that said, I think the many users of Jess stick with it due to it's maturity and 'rule engine features' as apposed to the convenient bundling of open source middle-ware. I have the feeling that many will get introduced to rule engines through Drools now, but when searching for something that gets the job done they will sway elsewhere. Lets not forget, even the Drools reference area (and JBoss Rules / Drools Developer Book) recommends you read: Jess in Action: Java Rule-based Systems On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:26 AM, dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com wrote: Rejoining the Jess community after a multi-year hiatus and notice that the mailing list has been very quiet. I am curious to see how Jess is doing now a days? Any impact from things like jBoss rules or other engines? Is the community still pretty active? Happy Holidays to everyone ! -- V/R -Socrates Frangis -Mathematician Software Engineer To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users y...@address.com' in the BODY of a message to majord...@sandia.gov, NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify owner-jess-us...@sandia.gov. To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users y...@address.com' in the BODY of a message to majord...@sandia.gov, NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify owner-jess-us...@sandia.gov. To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users y...@address.com' in the BODY of a message to majord...@sandia.gov, NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify owner-jess-us...@sandia.gov.
Re: JESS: Hello To Jess User Group and How Is Jess Doing?
Edson/Wolfgang: Thank you very much for your inputs. Agree on the evaluation criteria - that the list of questions can be long and deep - and to be honest, I am not sure what those might be. Clearly, the approach to the ecosystem, support model and costs, skills sets etc. all play a role in addition to the difference in the capabilities of the engines themselves. I will check out the Drools list list as well and again, look forward to inputs from this group. On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 8:14 PM, Edson Tirelli ed.tire...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I will abstain myself from discussing Drools specific features in this list, in respect to the other users and due to my involvement with the other project, but I can tell you that if your bias is towards Jess, go for it. As we all know it is an excellent engine, and if we look at the rules engine alone, the choice between Jess and Drools Expert IMHO is purely a matter of taste (syntax and API). The differences between the 2 products will be more salient when you start throwing into your analysis all other requirements, both functional and non-functional, for your use case, as well as looking at the ecosystem and other modules/products developed around them. Feel free to ask the Drools specific questions at the Drools mailing list. Community there is also very friendly and active. Cheers, Edson 2011/1/1 dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com: Thank's Edson. Will check it out. Drools seems to have come a long compared to when I last looked at it - given that you have a foot in both camps, any wisdom and guidance would much appreciated. My bias is towards Jess, perhaps since I got introduced to rules engines with the excellent Jess book but is it worth looking at Drools? I like the interactive 'protype'ability with Jess using the shell (still on 6.1). Does Drools have similar intractivity? We are developing using j jRuby (RoR) or Java. Thanks! On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Edson Tirelli ed.tire...@gmail.com wrote: May I suggest you take a look at Tohu? http://community.jboss.org/wiki/Tohu It is a small framework to do, it seems, exactly what you described. It is built on top of Drools, but even if you prefer to write your own framework on top of Jess, it can probably give you ideas for your own design. Need to say, though, that I never used it myself, so not sure how good/bad it is, but the video demo is nice. Lets not forget, even the Drools reference area (and JBoss Rules / Drools Developer Book) recommends you read: Jess in Action: Java Rule-based Systems It is an excellent book for people that want to learn about Rule-based Systems, so why not recommend it? :) Being a Drools developer, I can tell you that we always had a good relationship with the Jess community, and we have much more to gain by cooperating than competing. That is not to detract from one engine or the other, it is just the open source way of promoting innovation and education and building upwards from the shoulders of the giants that came first... :) Cheers and Happy New Year! Edson 2010/12/31 dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com: Perhaps a little, but not greatly. Am happy to hear. Jess was my first introduction to rules engines 4-5 years back but did not use it for a production system. Now we are looking to build a 'guided navigation' type of app using Jess where the rules determine what steps does a user need to do. I am really excited to be able to use a rules engine for that type of application; I am sure many of you have built similar things. Will keep you posted on questions/findings/lessons. Not having done real development for many years, I really enjoyed using the Jess shell (still v6, from the book) and actually build small prototypes with rules. Agree on the Drools making rules more accessible. On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Socrates Frangis soc.fran...@gmail.com wrote: Agree with Donald, were on holiday. Any impact from things like jBoss rules or other engines? -Perhaps a little, but not greatly. I will applaud Red Hat for exposing more and more people to rule engines through open source however. With that said, I think the many users of Jess stick with it due to it's maturity and 'rule engine features' as apposed to the convenient bundling of open source middle-ware. I have the feeling that many will get introduced to rule engines through Drools now, but when searching for something that gets the job done they will sway elsewhere. Lets not forget, even the Drools reference area (and JBoss Rules / Drools Developer Book) recommends you read: Jess in Action: Java Rule-based Systems On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:26 AM, dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com wrote: Rejoining the Jess community after a multi-year hiatus and notice that the
Re: JESS: Hello To Jess User Group and How Is Jess Doing?
I thought I was clear in my message when I wrote: Being a Drools developer... But thanks Peter, anyway. Edson 2011/1/1 Peter Lin wool...@gmail.com: edson is a member of drools team for those who don't know. On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 6:01 PM, dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com wrote: Thank's Edson. Will check it out. Drools seems to have come a long compared to when I last looked at it - given that you have a foot in both camps, any wisdom and guidance would much appreciated. My bias is towards Jess, perhaps since I got introduced to rules engines with the excellent Jess book but is it worth looking at Drools? I like the interactive 'protype'ability with Jess using the shell (still on 6.1). Does Drools have similar intractivity? We are developing using j jRuby (RoR) or Java. Thanks! On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Edson Tirelli ed.tire...@gmail.com wrote: May I suggest you take a look at Tohu? http://community.jboss.org/wiki/Tohu It is a small framework to do, it seems, exactly what you described. It is built on top of Drools, but even if you prefer to write your own framework on top of Jess, it can probably give you ideas for your own design. Need to say, though, that I never used it myself, so not sure how good/bad it is, but the video demo is nice. Lets not forget, even the Drools reference area (and JBoss Rules / Drools Developer Book) recommends you read: Jess in Action: Java Rule-based Systems It is an excellent book for people that want to learn about Rule-based Systems, so why not recommend it? :) Being a Drools developer, I can tell you that we always had a good relationship with the Jess community, and we have much more to gain by cooperating than competing. That is not to detract from one engine or the other, it is just the open source way of promoting innovation and education and building upwards from the shoulders of the giants that came first... :) Cheers and Happy New Year! Edson 2010/12/31 dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com: Perhaps a little, but not greatly. Am happy to hear. Jess was my first introduction to rules engines 4-5 years back but did not use it for a production system. Now we are looking to build a 'guided navigation' type of app using Jess where the rules determine what steps does a user need to do. I am really excited to be able to use a rules engine for that type of application; I am sure many of you have built similar things. Will keep you posted on questions/findings/lessons. Not having done real development for many years, I really enjoyed using the Jess shell (still v6, from the book) and actually build small prototypes with rules. Agree on the Drools making rules more accessible. On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Socrates Frangis soc.fran...@gmail.com wrote: Agree with Donald, were on holiday. Any impact from things like jBoss rules or other engines? -Perhaps a little, but not greatly. I will applaud Red Hat for exposing more and more people to rule engines through open source however. With that said, I think the many users of Jess stick with it due to it's maturity and 'rule engine features' as apposed to the convenient bundling of open source middle-ware. I have the feeling that many will get introduced to rule engines through Drools now, but when searching for something that gets the job done they will sway elsewhere. Lets not forget, even the Drools reference area (and JBoss Rules / Drools Developer Book) recommends you read: Jess in Action: Java Rule-based Systems On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:26 AM, dc tech dctech1...@gmail.com wrote: Rejoining the Jess community after a multi-year hiatus and notice that the mailing list has been very quiet. I am curious to see how Jess is doing now a days? Any impact from things like jBoss rules or other engines? Is the community still pretty active? Happy Holidays to everyone ! -- V/R -Socrates Frangis -Mathematician Software Engineer To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users y...@address.com' in the BODY of a message to majord...@sandia.gov, NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify owner-jess-us...@sandia.gov. To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users y...@address.com' in the BODY of a message to majord...@sandia.gov, NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify owner-jess-us...@sandia.gov. To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users y...@address.com' in the BODY of a message to
Re: JESS: Hello To Jess User Group and How Is Jess Doing?
Edson et al: I rarely get involved with this kind of thing but since there are more than 10 emails on the same subject and since Mark Proctor, Edson Tirelli and Dr. Friedman-Hill really shouldn't be drawn into the discussion due to a conflict of interest matter, and my friend and fellow instigator PL/ (woolfel) has not commented, may I be so bold as to interject these few thoughts: 1. There are about 25 or more BRMS/rulebased systems presently being used throughout the world. In this space they seem to be grouped into commercial and free, or almost free for personal use. Commercial systems can range from a few thousand to a few million US Dollars. Free (or almost free systems - no such thing as a free lunch) systems will require lots of time and study to learn what the commercial guys can provide in a short period of time. Also, most commercial vendors usually have schools for training purposes. 2a. EJFH has frequently mentioned that Jess is for programmers. But, he has written a book, Jess In Action, (a bit out of date by now but still spot-on applicable in most cases) and the on-line user's manual that is kept up to date really is quite good. Read it! Also, the Jess email list is quite as active as the Drools Users list and you can normally get a response within a few hours there. In addition, there is a 3rd party Fuzzy Jess for those who want a bit more expert system approach to their system. Jess comes with source code for an extra $100 but commercial applications have to be worked out with Sandia Labs. Unfortunately, Jess is NOT available (legally) outside the USA but is totally free (with source code) to military, government and/or students/teachers at approved universities. 2b. If you are using C/C++ as your main system, then CLIPS (C Language Interface to Production Systems) is quite good and could be considered a superset of Jess. In addition to the quite-excellent on-line manuals, they also have a book out by Dr. Joseph Girratano (University of Houston) and Gary Riley (formerly NASA but now independent) that is updated frequently and is on version 4 at the time of this email - I use the book for teaching CLIPS, CLIPS/R2 and, sometimes, to supplement the Jess In Action book By Dr. Friedman-Hill. Unfortunately, I haven't found a similar email list to the ones maintained by Drools or Jess. The latest version of CLIPS 6.3 compares quite favorably with OPSJ using Rete-2 on my performance testing. CLIPS also allows various optimization conflict resolution strategies and comes with source code if you want to change things up a bit. 3. Mark Proctor et cie developed Drools for the past few years and it was (years ago) a programmers-only language as well. Recently however they are moving more toward the BRMS space with Guvnor and other tools to make it easier for the business user to use, create and/or modify the rules; and to compete with ILOG and Advisor. They also have an active users email list and a developers email list. (PLEASE - do not take user questions to the developer list.) They still lack factory consulting but you can purchase factory phone-in tech support from Red Hat, their parent company, or advertise for a Drools consultant on their home page. In addition, there are two books on Drools (in addition to their on-line manual) available through Amazon, Barnes Noble, Nerd Books, etc. 4 Commercial, Rete-based systems normally have an evaluation copy (usually a full working version that is time-bombed to quit working after an appropriate period of time.) The biggies here are FICO Blaze Advisor (COBOL and .NET as well), IBM/ILOG JRules (COBOL and .NET as well), Pega Rules as part of the PegaSystems, MindBox for Mortgage Systems, and many others. In addition to some kind of text rules, these tools usually employ highly sophisticated Decision Tables (spreadsheets), Decision Trees, Reporting tools, Trouble Shooting tools, Professional Services (Consulting), Factory technical support (of various levels), etc. They are not cheap (usually $25K per developer seat) but, then, nobody ever got fired for using one of them. Most use some form of enhanced Rete and Blaze Advisor uses Rete 2 licensed from Dr. Forgy discussed below. 5. Non-Rete Commercial systems that might be considered could be Rule Burst (now owned by Oracle that also owns the Rete-based Haley Expert Systems), Visual Rules or Corticon (and others) that are, more or less, spreadsheet-based rule maintenance tools. All of them have some kind of rule optimization in place. These eye-catching models are far more familiar to the business users - and probably to your IT group and would compare to the Decision Tables from FICO, ILOG or Drools. In addition, these companies also have Professional Services and/or telephone technical support available for a cost. I have found that 75% or more of most business applications do not actually need Rete but
Re: JESS: Hello To Jess User Group and How Is Jess Doing?
On Jan 2, 2011, at 4:19 PM, James Owen wrote: Jess comes with source code for an extra $100 but commercial applications have to be worked out with Sandia Labs. Unfortunately, Jess is NOT available (legally) outside the USA but is totally free (with source code) to military, government and/or students/teachers at approved universities. Jim, I just wanted to clarify a bit, as there does seem to be a lot of misinformation out there concerning how Jess is licensed. Jess is available under one of four main licensing agreements. Three of these options are available worldwide -- it is not true that Jess is unavailable outside the US. Source code is indeed available as part of many agreements, but in no case is it specifically available for $100. First, Sandia offers a commercial license, comparable in cost to other commercial offerings; you can indeed license the source code, or just the binary. This is the most common arrangement. Second, Jess is available free of charge for academic use at accredited institutions. This was Jess's original audience and we are happy to continue to serve them. Third, Jess is available for a nominal fee to consultants and third- party solution developers. Fourth, because Jess is a product of a US government agency, it is available at no cost to other such agencies, subject to various rules and regulations. - Ernest Friedman-Hill Informatics Decision Sciences Phone: (925) 294-2154 Sandia National Labs PO Box 969, MS 9012ejfr...@sandia.gov Livermore, CA 94550 http://www.jessrules.com To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users y...@address.com' in the BODY of a message to majord...@sandia.gov, NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify owner-jess-us...@sandia.gov.
