Skip to main content

Tackling the Debugging Challenge of Rule Based Systems

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 19))

Abstract

Rule based systems are often presented as a simpler and more natural way to build computer systems - compared to both imperative programming and other logic formalisms. However, with respect to finding and preventing faults this promise of simplicity remains elusive.

Based on the experience from three rule base creation projects and a survey of developers, this paper identifies reasons for this gap between promise and reality and proposes steps that can be taken to close it. An architecture for a complete support of rule base development is presented.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Zacharias, V.: Development and verification of rule based systems - a survey of developers. In: Bassiliades, N., Governatori, G., Paschke, A. (eds.) Rule ML 2008. LNCS, vol. 5321, pp. 6–16. springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Kifer, M., Lausen, G., Wu, J.: Logical foundations of object-oriented and frame-based languages. Journal of the ACM 42, 741–843 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Decker, S., Erdmann, M., Fensel, D., Studer, R.: Ontobroker: Ontology-based access to distributed and semi-structured unformation. In: Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems, pp. 351–369 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Kifer, M., de Bruijn, J., Boley, H., Fensel, D.: A realistic architecture for the semantic web. In: Adi, A., Stoutenburg, S., Tabet, S. (eds.) RuleML 2005. LNCS, vol. 3791, pp. 17–29. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. McCarthy, J.: Programs with common sense. In: Proceedings of the Teddington Conference on the Mechanization of Thought Processes, London, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, pp. 75–91 (1959)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Larman, C., Basili, V.R.: Iterative and incremental development: A brief history. IEEE Computer, 47–56 (June 2003)

    Google Scholar 

  7. MacCormack, A.: Product-development practices that work. MIT Sloan Management Review, 75–84 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M., Myers, B.: Estimating the numbers of end users and end user programmers. In: L/HCC 2005: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, pp. 207–214 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Boehm, B.: Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II. Prentice Hall PTR, Englewood Cliffs (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Rosson, M.B., Balling, J., Nash, H.: Everyday programming: Challenges and opportunities for informal web development. In: Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human Centric Computing (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Harrison, W.: The dangers of end-user programming. IEEE Software, 5–7 (July/August 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Ruthruff, J., Burnett, M.: Six challenges in supporting end-user debugging. In: 1st Workshop on End-User Software Engineering (WEUSE 2005) at ICSE 2005 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Ruthruff, J., Phalgune, A., Beckwith, L., Burnett, M.: Rewarding good behavior: End-user debugging and rewards. In: VL/HCC 2004: IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Jacob, R., Froscher, J.: A software engineering methodology for rule-based systems. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 2, 173–189 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Baroff, J., Simon, R., Gilman, F., Shneiderman, B.: Direct manipulation user interfaces for expert systems, pp. 99–125 (1987)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Grossner, C., Gokulchander, P., Preece, A., Radhakrishnan, T.: Revealing the structure of rule based systems. International Journal of Expert Systems (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Mehrotra, M.: Rule groupings: a software engineering approach towards verification of expert systems. Technical report, NASA Contract NAS1-18585, Final Rep. (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Preece, A., Talbot, S., Vignollet, L.: Evaluation of verification tools for knowledge-based systems. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud. 47, 629–658 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Gupta, U.: Validation and verification of knowledge-based systems: a survey. Journal of Applied Intelligence, 343–363 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Tsai, W.T., Vishnuvajjala, R., Zhang, D.: Verification and validation of knowledge-based systems. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 11, 202–212 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Preece, A.D., Shinghal, R.: Foundation and application of knowledge base verification. International Journal of Intelligent Systems 9, 683–701 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Zacharias, V.: Visualization of rule bases - the overall structure. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Knowledge Management - Special Track on Knowledge Visualization and Knowledge Discovery (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Zacharias, V., Abecker, A.: Explorative debugging for rapid rule base development. In: Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Scripting for the Semantic Web at the ESWC 2007 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Zacharias, V. (2009). Tackling the Debugging Challenge of Rule Based Systems. In: Filipe, J., Cordeiro, J. (eds) Enterprise Information Systems. ICEIS 2008. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 19. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00670-8_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00670-8_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-00669-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-00670-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics