Re: it's not just the box dummy - it's just a house of cards. -- MIDRANGE-L



Rob Dixon wrote:

> <<snip>>
>
> These are my personal views.
>
> The real problem?
>
> At present, we separate rules from data and encapsulate them in programs
> (and so set them in concrete) and we put the data in a database.  I call
> this artificial split Separatism. This, in my view, is not the way the
> brain works, and it is the fundamental problem behind all our efforts.

<<really big snip>>

Rob,

Back in the early 70's I was a cofounder in a company based in NYC and we were
developing a systems design tool/code generator.

Just for the heck of it, another partner and I took a night course in AI at
Columbia and walked away from that with the idea that as long as we do not know
how the human brain works we can never artifically emulate the process.  Hence
rule based "expert" systems, on VERY fast computers, is as good as it gets.

Well, a long time later the S/38 was announced and by then I'd moved to Seattle
and started my own company.  But I revisited the "rules" we had been developing
software under.  Since my company was a S/34 provider we sure as heck didn't 
want
to port that code to the S/38!  But, we had to stay in business and kept on
rolling, but my "hobby" project was to separate the application from the 
language
from the OS from the machine.  IBM already had done a lot of that with CPF/MI
layer.

Well, I don't want to get too winded here, but the concept was to allow a
company's "Policy and Procedures" manual to be entered into a system which would
drive the computer application.  Just as the current design methods are too
combersome, as you mentioned, we tried to break apart every entity of 
information
and assign rules to it.  Entities would be assembled into forms and forms would
be shuffled through the corporate mill based upon your job description and the
forms requirements/routing.

The human mind does not work like a computer and applications do not work like
the flow of information through a company.  We wanted to create something on a
higher plane than even the 4GL we have today.  IMHO, they are not much more than
integrity checking code generators.

When I would discuss the idea with peers 15 years ago I would receive that 
"Earth
to James" look but I still believe it's viable.
The foundation for the concept was after reading "Principles of Systems" by Jay
W. Forrester (more than once till I finally "got" it).

In the big picture, the purpose is to emulate information flow.  The "manual"
could be updated real-time and the application driver would react accordingly.
Unfortuantely, up until variable length fields and date/time data types were
intoduced, the DBMS was and to a lesser degress still is the big stumbling
block.  The other was speed.  But that is becomming a moot point.

The other big stumbling block is getting a company to actually define their
policies and procedures! ;-)
I'm still trying to incorporate the "it depends" answer I keep getting.

Just a minor digression: If I recall, it was also in the early 80's that 
"natural
language" query front ends were developed.  The flaw: People just don't know
English well enough to ask a question properly.  The example given was that a
user would type: "Give me a list of all of the registers voters in New Hamphire
and Vermont."  The computer came back with nothing.  Why? You can't be 
registered
in New Hamphire AND Vermont.  Interpreting intent vs strict language construct 
is
a biggie!

But anyway, since you seem to be hot-n-heavy into viewing design under a new
light, maybe you can point me in the direction of others that would like to kick
around the choices.  Maybe we can even start a thread that can compete with the
number of posts involving the "good ol' days" or CA/400 bashing. <bg>


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