How does KEEL differ from conventional rules engines / rules-based systems?
In a sense, KEEL could be considered a rules-based system (KEEL Engines compared to rules engines). However, conventional rules-based systems are based on IF | THEN | ELSE discrete logic. These systems work well when dealing with compartmentalized data, because one is dealing with simple comparisons, where the rule either fires or doesn’t fire. When one is dealing with more complex relationships (where multiple, non-linear inter-relationships between information items exist), then the IF | THEN | ELSE logic may become very complex and hard to manage. For example, situations where pieces of information are treated differently as the situation changes, or situations that are based on the value of other pieces of information (time and space). Using conventional rule-based systems, it may be hard to visualize the rule set as a whole, because one is sequentially processing the rules, one at a time. KEEL, on the other hand, processes all information items “together” in a balancing process. W
