The document summarizes the results of an online survey of 76 rule-based system developers. It discusses the tools, methodologies, challenges, and comparisons to other programming approaches reported by participants. Key findings included the continued use of text editors for development, debugging challenges, and a lack of academic interest in practical rule-based methodologies.

1. Development and Verification of Rule Based Systems - a Survey of Developers Valentin Zacharias FZI Karlsruhe, Germany

3. 76 Participants

4. Languages and Systems?

5. Size Mean Median Standard Deviation PM for entire software 59 15 148 PM for rule base 9 5,5 15 Number of rules 1969 120 8693 Size of average rule 9,3 5 17 Size of largest rule 24 11 39 Rule developers 3 2 4 Other software developers 3 1 8 Domain experts that created rules 1,5 1 2 Domain experts as consultants 1,9 1 2,5 Domain experts for V&V 1,7 1 2,4 Others 0,6 0 1,6

6. Size 65000 learned rules for ‘disease event analysis’ 100 PM to build a system that determines the input parameters for a medical imaging system Mean Median Standard Deviation PM for entire software 59 15 148 PM for rule base 9 5,5 15 Number of rules 1969 120 8693 Size of average rule 9,3 5 17 Size of largest rule 24 11 39 Rule developers 3 2 4 Other software developers 3 1 8 Domain experts that created rules 1,5 1 2 Domain experts as consultants 1,9 1 2,5 Domain experts for V&V 1,7 1 2,4 Others 0,6 0 1,6

7. Use?

9. Methodology

10. Methodology – only 10PM+

11. Methodology – only 10PM+ Medical Best Practices Integration of Car Information Scheduling (Logistics) Credit Allocation

12. Methodology – only 10PM+ 18 Years Ago: “ The most frequent (40%) life cycle model used was the cyclic model [...]. However 22% of the respondents stated that no model was followed”

14. Development Tools

15. Development Tools IDE without debugging Hard coded rules Schema aware XML Editor ‘ this [Text Editor] is only for viewing the results SWRL Tab

16. Verification & Debugging “ The correctness of rule bases is ensured with formal verification”

18. Debugging Tools

19. Debugging Tools Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor Gnu Prolog SWI Prolog Jboss Rules / Drools Jboss Rules / Drools F-Logic (SmartWeb) SWI Prolog? Visual Prolog BizTalk Jboss Rules / Drools Jess

22. Comparison To ‘Conventional Programming’ and Issues Hindering Development “ Runtime Performance and Expressivity are the problems hindering the development of rule based systems”

24. Comparison

26. Issues Hindering Development

28. Conclusions