I think Young-Jin Lee wrote:
> Hi,
> I heard a few months ago, a JESS book will come out soon.
> I'd like to know if there's any update of it.

Hi Jess Book fans,

The reviewers are currently looking at the manuscript up to chapter
15. Chapter 16 is completed, and I'm working on chapter 17. The
outline calls for 22 chapters, so I'm in the home stretch.

I'm really happy with how it's coming out, but it's been slow going;
it's really behind schedule. When I agreed to the schedule, I
apparently forgot that I have a 4-year-old daughter. Anyway, there are
seven technical reviewers and they've all been very encouraging about
what's been done so far.

The book is organized into seven parts of about three chapters each,
plus a few appendices. Five of the seven parts are done. The first
part is an overview of rule based systems in general. The second is
basically an expanded Jess manual. The remaining five parts each
develop a complete application, including knowledge acquisitiion, rule
development, and interfacing of Jess to some larger system. The five
applications are:

1) A simple text-based information kiosk that tells you what
income-tax forms to bring home from the post office (completed.)

2) A PC Hardware Repair Expert with a GUI written entirely as a Jess
Script (completed.)

3) A control program for the HVAC systems in a large office building.
This program reasons about Java Beans. The Beans connect to either the
real hardware via native methods or to a graphical simulator. It's a
densely multithreaded program; I've run a version with over 200
threads (completed.)

4) (I'm currently working on this one) A "Web Service" using the Java
Web Services Developer's Kit. I'm not 100% sure what the actual
application is yet -- I think it will be a sales configuration advisor
(i.e., "if you buy this, you'll need this too.") Suggestions would be
welcome, actually. Right now I'm working on the infrastructure. If you
haven't played with the JWSDK, you should -- it's fun. I may actually
present the same code in several contexts -- i.e., as a Servlet, as a
Web Service, as a JSP...

5) An "enterprise-level application" based on J2EE. Jess will be
attached to some EJBs. The application will probably be
HR-related. Again, suggestions will be entertained!

Manning Press (my publisher) is developing a "work in progress" web
site, and I'm currently preparing some material for this site. I will
most likely be posting one complete application (three chapters.) I
haven't decided which one, but obviously it'll be one of the first
three. Maybe the PC Repair expert. When this material is available,
I'll definitely post the URL here.

Ideas, comments, suggestions, welcome as always.


---------------------------------------------------------
Ernest Friedman-Hill  
Distributed Systems Research        Phone: (925) 294-2154
Sandia National Labs                FAX:   (925) 294-2234
Org. 8920, MS 9012                  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PO Box 969                  http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov
Livermore, CA 94550

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