Customer Reviews (2)

A very practical guide to the engineering of expert systems
This book is a combination of introduction to expert systems and guide lines for getting an expert system up and running. Topics like rule-based expert systems, including forward chaining and backward chaining, inexact reasoning, frame-based systems, induction systems are first introduced in a scientific manner and then follows the engineering methodologies. Important algorithms are described in both plain English and descriptive math. Loads of real-world expert system example projects are given through out the whole book, with the guide from problem identification to architecturing to coding to testing to evaluation to expansion of the system. Loads of source code. This book also well addresses the question of which approach to choose for what domains. There are many comprehensive comparisons between technologies, like rules vs frames, etc.

Although this book is a little bit dated, many of the engineering principles which are emphasized in this book still hold the value very well. You see rapid prototype, intensive code testing and short iterations everywhere in this book.

I personally think this is a book which should not be overlooked by anybody entering the world of expert systems or knowledge engineering.

Good and Easy Understanding
This book helps students for an easy understanding the difficult math theories by illustration and simple words.

Thanks the author. ... Read more

Product Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA'99, held in Florence, Italy in August/September 1999. The 105 revised papers presented together with three invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 241 submissions. The volume addresses all current aspects of advanced information systems applications. The papers are organized in topical sections on object-oriented databases; fundamentals; queries; advanced information systems; workflow management systems; heterogeneous, distributed, and federated databases; transactions; data warehousing and data mining; spatial databases; internet applications; and temporal databases. ... Read more

Product Description
This book combines coverage of expert systems theory with coverage of practical applications using CLIPS, an expert systems shell widely used in government, industry, and education. The first part of the book (Chapters 1-6) presents the underlying theory behind expert systems and how they fit into the scope of computer science; that is the logic, probability, data structures, AI, and other topics that form the theory of expert systems. Learning the advantages and disadvantages of expert systems, students will be able to make informed decisions regarding the appropriate use of expert system technology. The second half (Chapters 7-12) is an introduction to the CLIPS expert system tool which now also includes coverage of the procedural and object-oriented capabilities. This part is a practical introduction to expert system programming that serves to reinforce and clarify the theoretical concepts developed in the first part. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

very good in general
The condition is very good and price is reasonable, however, the shipping period is a bit longer than my expectation.

Great Tutorial for CLIPS Including Patterns With a Very Lengthy and Somewhat Confusing Introduction to Expert Systems

Just want to learn CLIPS: skip the intro. Just want a first introduction to expert systems: try a different book. Personally I liked: Introduction to Expert Systems (3rd Edition). You know expert systems and want more reading food: Go for this one. It contains endless material and references.

"Expert Systems" is a great tutorial of the C based open source expert system shell CLIPS. It even contains patterns of usage. This part alone is worth the read of this rather expensive book. Also some nice examples of expert systems are programmed in a very instructive way. I liked the implementation of a system with certainty factors(MYCIN style) and the developer implementation of backward chaining in CLIPS (an only forward chaining shell).

The first half of the book is a very thorough overview of expert systems. For each introduced concept the book names nearly all known terms to describe this very concept. For an introduction it is extremely important to name only the most common term and then after some time maybe one or the other more.
Reasoning and reasoning with uncertainty is well covered. Each chapter has ample references. Here again a little more orientation would have been very helpful.

The book itself is nicely bound and printed. It is a pleasure to look at and a little heavy to hold for a long time.

I fully recommend the CLIPS part and I do recommend the general expert systems part as a second or better third book on this topic.

G&R Expert Systems
Gary Riley was, for a long time, a NASA employee whose sole assignment seemed to be to work out the C implementation of the OPS language from LISP to C so that the military could use it.LISP, even the Symbolics LISP machine, was far too slow for practical applications.Dr. Girratano worked with Gary to produce a book that could be used as a text book in classes taught at the University of Houston and could be attended by the NASA personnel.All hand-in-glove situation that worked out quite well.

But, The Book!I have used it to teach many of my classes on AI.The first five or six chapters can be applied to ANY rulebased system.The first two chapters can be read by any person who wants to understand more about AI.True enough, most of the vendors today have directed their efforts to Java, but the speed of CLIPS is now (since about 20008) one of the fastest in the world.The power of CLIPS is unparalleled in terms of subroutines and extensions that have been implemented over the past 20 years by NASA and others.

The CLIPS language is free.The book is extremely inexpensive for a course in AI.My advice is to read it, devour it, consume it and understand it.Unfortunately, after that you won't be able to talk with your companions about AI since they will know very little except If-THEN-ELSE is part of a rulebased system.If you can find a university that teaches this book, TAKE THE COURSE!!If not, read it on your on your own and join a local rulebase group to help you grow.Above all, have fun.

SDG
jco

Up-to-date, accessible and concise. Great introduction to expert systems
The 4th edition has remarkable changes compared to the 3rd edition, which was written in 1990. Almost all the references are highly up-to-date, new trends in the AI field and new applications leveraging expert systems are introduced all through this book. The content ranges from an overview to the technology of Expert Systems, the basic scientific foundation of Expert Systems and the CLIPS tool for implementing expert systems. There are two chapters about reasoning under uncertainty and inexact reasoning, which are theways the AI systems are heading. Things like semantic web, its advantage and problems are very well sorted out in the first chapter. The authors put a good deal of humour into the text all through this book, the formal logic stuff is not that boring as it usually appears in other book. I wish I had had this book as my first book for formal logic/deduction systems. The mathematical mechanisms for things like resolution/deduction are explained with plenty of well-arranged diagrams and tables to help readers understand better. Every chapter comes with well-designed assignments. An excellent text book for introductory AI courses (I believe a motivated high-school kid will have no problem to understand the book since it is so well written). And also a good reference for those who need to look up basic concepts while engineering expert systems. I'm constructing an expert system at the moment, got this book 2 weeks ago and it's already dog-eared on my desk. For its targeted audience, this book is truly the best-of-breed. Highly recommended.

Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Fourth Edition
An excellent text for a first course in Expert systems. ... Read more