METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR INTEGRATION OF DECLARATIVE RULE-BASED PROCESSING WITH PROCEDURAL PROGRAMMING IN A DIGITAL DATA-PROCESSING ENVIRONMENT

• US 20140019400A1
• Filed: 05/31/2013
• Published: 01/16/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/26/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pegasystems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Pegasystems Incorporated
• Inventors: Hofmann, Andreas G., Trefler, Alan
• Granted Patent: US 8,959,480 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/47
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/311 Functional or applicative languages; Rewrite languages
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/025 Extracting rules from data

Abstract

The present invention provides methods and systems for integrating a procedural computational model with a declarative computational model. For example, in one aspect, the present invention provides a method for integrating a plurality of procedural instructions in a procedural computational system with a plurality of declarative rules in a declarative computational system. In such a method, for each of the procedural instructions operating on one or more variables, a hash table indexed by variable names is utilized to determine whether any of these variables participate in at least one of the declarative rules. Upon execution of a procedural instruction that changes a variable participating in a declarative rule, other variables associated with the rule are updated so as to maintain a relationship imposed by the rule among the variables. The updating of the other variables is performed prior to execution of other procedural instructions.

Claims

1. A method of integrating a plurality of procedural instructions in a procedural computational system with a plurality of declarative rules in a declarative computational system, the method comprising the steps of:

for each of said procedural instructions operating on one or more variables, determining whether any of said variables participate in at least one of said declarative rules by employing a hash table indexed by variable names, and

upon execution of a procedural instruction changing a variable participating in a declarative rule, updating other variables associated with said rule so as to maintain a relationship imposed by said rule among said variables,

wherein said updating of other variables is performed prior to execution of other procedural instructions.

2-95. -95. (canceled)

96. A method of unifying one or more declarative rules and a plurality of procedural instructions in a procedural computational system the method comprising the steps of:

upon execution of a procedural instruction that changes one or more variables, updating one or more other variables participating in one or more declarative rules so as to maintain relationships imposed by said one or more rules among said variables,

wherein said updating of said one or more other variables is performed prior to execution of other procedural instructions.