You haven't managed to convey a clear picture of your problems, I think, and that's why nobody has answered. As I rather guess than see it, there are two major (sub-)problems: (1) generating "complex reports" according to "rules" (2) coming to grips with the HSL (horrible scripting language)
To judge the possibility and usefulness of applying an expert system, one has to know whether (and how) it's possible to represent Text and Format as working memory facts, what their attributes besides Name and Present would be, and what other entities might play a role in the rules. Basically, any set of "if condition then action" can be implemented in an expert system, but this doesn't mean that it is always the best choice. Jess won't be able to help you with the HSL problem. Is there no other way (API) to access the text data according to the structure (which, as you write, you know). I guess that "binary sgml/xml" means that it is in some proprietary hierarchically structured format. Would it not make sense to reduce the usage of HSL to retrieve a DBMS document and transform it into XML, and process it with decent tools? -W On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:57 PM, Fernando <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > > I need to create some complex reports from a database whose data is > structured text (sort of xml or sgml). The reports are generated following a > rather complex set of rules. For example: > > "If text x is present and text y has format f, then apply format z to text > w" > > The text is in a documental database that behaves basically as a binary > sgml/xml document. The code that manipulates it is written in this DBMS's > 'scriptiong language', so the text is sort of pre-parsed and I know it's > structure. > > The output is always text, transformed following these rules (and there's a > bunch of them and they sometimes depend on other rules). The amount of text > in the database is rather small (approximately 1Mb), it's the > transformations and rules that are a bit complicated. > > I guess this could be considered an forward-chaining expert system. Is Jess > the right tool for this? O:-) > > This system has already been implemented (perpetrated?) with a horrible > scripting language that comes with the dbms used for storing the data, but > it's very hairy and unmaintainable. Working with it is a nightmare and it > must be rewritten. > > I wrote some Python code that generates code in the dbms scripting > language. This is because the so called scripting language is terribly > limited and almost doesn't support any abstraction (no procedures, lousy > variables, lousy loops, etc...). 2000 lines of python code create 3.000.000 > LOC in the lousy 'language'. This huge size (+- 70 Megs of ascii text) > creates other problems and it's really a nightmare. :-( > > After googling a bit about expert systems and Jess, I thought it could be a > much easier and powerful way to implement this kind of system. Is this > correct? > > What books should I read and most importantly, are there any similar open > source projects whose source I can study? O:-) > > Any help will be _greatly_ appreciated. :-) > > Fernando >
