Driving an interactive decision service from a forward-chaining rule engine

• US 9,311,602 B2
• Filed: 11/16/2013
• Issued: 04/12/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Rajesh, Rao
• Primary Examiner(s): Chaki, Kakali
• Assistant Examiner(s): Zidanic, Michael
• Application Number:
  US14/082,121
• Publication Number:
  US 20150142699A1
• Time in Patent Office: 878 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/027 Frames
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46

Abstract

Disclosed techniques include generating a plurality of questions, each question based upon one or more conditions of a plurality of conditions, wherein the plurality of conditions are generated a plurality of business rules associated with a forward changing rule engine; identifying, as a side effect of evaluating the plurality of business rules for outcome data, missing information corresponding to the plurality of questions; and selecting, for presentation to a user, a first question of the plurality of questions to elicit the missing information from the user.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising:

a processor;

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium coupled to the processor; and

logic, stored on the computer readable storage medium and executed on the processor, for;

generating a plurality of questions for an interactive decision service, each question based upon one or more conditions of a plurality of conditions, wherein the plurality of conditions are associated with a plurality of business rules;

identifying, as a side effect of evaluating, by a forward changing rule engine, the plurality of business rules for outcome data, missing information corresponding, to the plurality of questions;

selecting, for presentation to a user, a first question of the plurality of questions to elicit the missing information from the user

generating, for each question of the plurality of questions a corresponding reference count and ordinal ranking; and

identifying candidate questions from the plurality of questions;

based upon the corresponding reference counts and ordinal rankings;

wherein the first question is selected from the candidate question.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, the logic further comprising logic for assigning to each question of the plurality of questions, a corresponding weight, wherein the candidate questions are, in addition to reference counts and ordinal rankings, also identified based upon the corresponding weights.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein each reference count corresponding to the plurality of questions is based upon a number of times the forward chaining rule engine references the corresponding question during pattern matching.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the forward chaining rule engine employs a Rete algorithm for evaluating the plurality of business rules.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the interactive decision service is associated with an interactive voice response system.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the interactive decision service is dated with a self-service kiosk.

7. A computer programming product, comprising:

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium; and

logic, stored on the computer readable storage medium for execution on one or more processors, for;

generating a plurality of questions for an interactive decision service, each question based upon one or more conditions of a plurality of conditions, wherein the plurality of conditions are associated with a plurality of business rules;

identifying, as a side effect of evaluating, by a forward changing rule engine, the plurality of business rules for outcome data, missing information corresponding to the plurality of questions;

selecting, for presentation to a user, a first question of the plurality of questions to elicit the missing information from the user

generating, for each question of the plurality of questions a corresponding reference count and ordinal ranking; and

identifying candidate questions from the plurality of questions;

based upon the corresponding reference counts and ordinal rankings;

wherein the first question is selected from the candidate questions.

8. The computer programming product of claim 7, the logic further comprising logic for assigning to each question of the plurality of questions, a corresponding weight, wherein the candidate questions are, in addition to reference counts and ordinal rankings, also identified based upon the corresponding weights.

9. The computer programming product of claim 7, wherein each reference count corresponding to the plurality of questions is based upon a number of times the forward chaining rule engine references the corresponding question during pattern matching.

10. The computer programming product of claim 7, wherein the forward chaining rule engine employs a Rote algorithm for evaluating the plurality of business rules.

11. The computer programming product of claim 7, wherein the interactive decision service is associated with an interactive voice response system.