As a follow up to this most informative article on rules, folks may be interested in some emerging technology for rules in open vocabulary executable English over SQL.

The technology works as a kind of Wiki for writing and running applications in a form similar to syllogisms.

It's live, online at www.reengineeringllc.com , and shared use is free.

There's nothing to download, just point a browser to the site to view, run and change the business intelligence and other examples provided, and to write and run your own examples.

The underlying engine gives the rules a highly declarative meaning. For example, changing the order of the rules does not change what they do.

From the rules, the engine can automatically generate and run SQL that would be too complex to write reliably by hand. The engine can also explain the results of running the generated SQL, in hypertexted English, at the business level.

I really liked this, but comnig from a C++ background where we're not privileged to have such infrastructure software I would have liked more of a theoretical background into the rules, along with some references ... This is exactly a problem I'm facing at work today so for once an hour that I've spent on the net is justified!)