A good source of links for the general subject of AI, including 2 links for 'Qualitative Physics' !

The main link is to business rules subjects on the home site. The articles are generic than the actual implementations business rules with rule engines discussed on this site.

Business rules tutorial.

Updated Sept 8 2008: added BizTalk links ( after much agonized debate with myself )

Generally identical to "enterprise" business rule engines, usually implemented in Java or C++. This category excludes many pattern or search engines geared toward business intelligence and data mining.

From the site:

DBpedia is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available on the Web. DBpedia allows you to ask sophisticated queries against Wikipedia and to link other datasets on the Web to Wikipedia data.

Their demo page for the subject Semantic Web, using DBpedia's Linked Data Interface format.

Mike Bergman's site has an interesting article on ESW, titled "Enterprise Semantic Webs (ESW) Demand New Database Paradigms", at http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=185. In fact, it's one of the few defintions of ESW availible.

Nice documentation front end, Good use of AJAX. Dual licensing.

• Demo of documentation for Ext version 1.1, powered by Ext 1.1.
• Demo of documentation for Ext version 2.0-dev, powered by Ext 2.0.

A very big, enterprise level Java RE environment ...

From the site:

FDSE is an easy-to-install search engine for local and remote sites. It returns fast, accurate results from a template-driven architecture.

Gubed is a cross platform program to debug PHP scripts.

Link to BB.COM SOA Subject

Cook up Web sites fast with CakePHP

Adding related information and services

Bake bigger and better with CakePHP

Use Sanitize for your protection

Use CakePHP's Session and Request Handler components

Three-part "Learning PHP" series, teaching you how to use PHP through building a simple workflow application

Also see Using PHPEclipse : Installation : Installing the DBG Debugger.

Updated Oct 3 2008:

Libraries and a toolkit for developing semantic web applications using MicroSoft .NET technology. Not open source of course, but their developer documentation in interesting.

The Learning Agent Center at George Mason University.

Excellent text book on reasoning and agents from Gheorghe Tecuci et al, Building Intelligent Agents. ( Academic Press, 1998 ).

... building business rule applications or rule-based systems using the Java programming language.

* Promote rule-based programming in Java in general.

* Provide a vendor neutral portal for finding and sharing information.

* Inform and educate implementors and users of the "Java Rule Engine API" (JSR-94).

* Discuss future evolutions of the Java Rule Engine API.

From the jQuery site: "jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages".

jQuery is also the base Javascript library in Drupal.

Also see the Weblink to PQuery.

Excellent discussion of CakePHP core classes, particularly the Dispatcher class.

Mike Bergman has written numerous insightful articles about the Semantic Web.

During a speech to a Linux audience on the necessity of "standardizing" Linux, Novell President and CEO Ron Hovsepian continues the thought expressed above by saying, 

"We need the software vendors to have their footprints on Linux. On Windows, application availability is their biggest advantage."

He seems to be talking about the Microsoft model of standardization, that is by being the one and only application.

From the W3.Org site

The Open Data Movement aims at making data freely available to everyone. There are already various interesting open data sources availiable on the Web.

From the OpenSource Java site:

Java, Eclipse plugins, server supporting WSDL.

Excel + Java + Eclipse

A combination of Excel, Eclipse, and Open Source Tools, backed by OpenRules support, forms a practical framework for full-scale Business Rules Management and rules-based Web Application Development. OpenRules embodies an ingenious software architecture that maximizes customizability and is open to any integration solution. Extensive reuse of proven, commonly available software results in a framework that matches or exceeds similar commercial systems in speed, compactness, and ease of use.

http://openrules.com/overview.htm

PEAR PHP_Debug, Project description:

PHP_Debug : A simple and fast way to debug PHP code This PHP debug library offers you the ability to debug your PHP code and generate a trace of your program. - Process time - Database and query process time - Functional debug - Check performance

A simple fast tool that seems to provide most of what a PHP programmer needs ( minus having to recompile the PHP sources ). Requires Javascript.

From the PQuery site:

PQuery is a set of helper classes for JQuery JavaScript library.This library allows you to easily integrate AJAX , Effects and other JQuery functionality into your PHP scripts.IT has a small foot print and is compatible with PHP4 and PHP5.

Updated Sept 24 2008: added features and SWCL link

REWERSE is short for "Reasoning on the Web with Rules and Semantics".

From the site: REWERSE is a research "Network of Excellence" (NoE) on "Reasoning on the Web" that is funded by the EU Commission and Switzerland within the "6th Framework Programme" (FP6), Information Society Technologies (IST), Priority 2 under the project reference number 506779. REWERSE addresses the IST strategic action line "Semantic-based knowledge systems".

 My old Rule Based Systems tutorial, some of it outdated.

It is easier to get a feeling for the site by clicking the 'random article' item on the menu.  The site is still sparse in parts.

From the site: 

Link to the LSDIS (Large Scale Distributed Information Systems) Lab

From the site:

The Semantic Web Client Library represents the complete Semantic Web as a single RDF graph. The library enables applications to query this global graph using SPARQL- and find(SPO) queries. To answer queries, the library dynamically retrieves information from the Semantic Web by dereferencing HTTP URIs and by following rdfs:seeAlso links. The library is written in Java and is based on the Jena framework.

SemSol seems to be connected to the Semantic Web Community Portal, http://www.semanticweb.org/, which has been on the verge of being relauched for many months ....

From the SemSol site, "SemSol is a forthcoming Web development framework that uses Semantic Web technology to significantly increase productivity and flexibility for everyday Web programming".

Also see http://bnode.org/, Benjamin Nowack's personal website.

Updated Sept 25 2008: new link This page describes the taxonomy of semantic web topics adopted by the European projects Knowledge Web and REWERSE

Semantic web tutorial ( Static HTML ).

Update 3/26/2008 - ARC completely reimplemented and released as ARC2.

Update 7/25/2008 - added Triplify 0.3 section.

From the ARC site:

ARC is a lightweight, SPARQL-enabled RDF system for mainstream Web projects. It is written in PHP and has been optimized for shared (or otherwise performance- or privilege-limited) Web environments.

ARC facilitates the integration of RDF and SPARQL functionality in PHP/MySQL-driven frameworks.

From the site:

SemWebCentral is an Open Source development web site for the Semantic Web. It was established in January, 2004 to support the Semantic Web community by providing a free, centralized place for Open Source developers to manage Semantic Web software and content development. Another purpose is to provide resources for developers or other interested parties to learn about the Semantic Web and how to begin developing Semantic Web content and software.

The purpose of the mod.smalltalk project is to integrate Smalltalk with the Apache Web Server via Fast CGI.

On the page describing Fast CGI, they say:

FastCGI is a fast, open, and secure Web server interface that solves the performance problems inherent in CGI, without introducing the overhead and complexity of proprietary APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

The Inference Web is a Semantic Web based knowledge provenance infrastructure that supports interoperable explanations of sources, assumptions, learned information, and answers as an enabler for trust.

Tools for Semantic Web Rules and Ontologies, including Translation, Inferencing, Analysis, and Authoring.

From the site:

The Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group has been established to develop strategies and materials to increase awareness among the Web community of the need and benefit for the Semantic Web, and educate the Web community regarding related solutions and technologies. 

The old top page for the 3 tutorials.

VisualWorks Smalltalk has drifted and evolved across the years eventually winding up with CINCOM. While not Open Source, it is a mature product and CINCOM has a liberal download policy for non-commercial use. They encourage you to register before downloading, but do not absolutely require you to do so, which shows the right spirit.

Excellent tutorials and references.

An interesting collection of papers accepted.

From the site: "xajax is an open source PHP class library that allows you to easily create powerful, web-based, Ajax applications using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP".

There is also a fairly inactive Xajax module project at Drupal, although it may be lurking to life again, because some one did the Xajax upgrade for Drupal 5.1 recently.

A very concise and straightforward introduction to XML, RDF and the Semantic Web.

Updated: Sept 24 2007

It is a browser plugin, which introduces browser dependencies, but the project is Open Source and seems to be active and well-supported.

From the site:

Mozilla RDF was originally used to support the Aurora/Sidebar user interface and SmartBrowsing metadata services. It's main use in Mozilla now is as a common data model and API for use in XUL-based applications.

From the site: "This prolog is enhanced with the JavaScript callout capability though a rudimentary external/3 call; see the arithmetic functions for examples".

A link to History.

Updated Sept 7 2008: added seaBreeze link

Seaside

To get a good feel for Seaside development environment, read the excellent technical introduction by Shaffer Consulting.

Note that the article was written in 2005 and may be obsolete in parts. For example, Seaside now supports several object-oriented databases, including Gemstone.

Revised Nov 1 2008: Draft of OWL2 specs.

The recent drafts of the OWL2 specification describe some important changes from OWL1. In a nutshell,

The structural specification of OWL 2 provides the foundation for the implementation of OWL 2 tools such as APIs and reasoners. ... This document also defines the functional-style syntax, which closely follows the structural specification and allows OWL 2 ontologies to be written in a compact form.

Surveying open-source AJAX toolkits

Mozilla's Category:AJAX

Updated Sept 12 2008: moved page to Home site ( it's a standard, not a project or product ).

See "Links - Business Process Execution Language on the Home site".

Updated Sept 28 2008: fixups and links

From the CakePHP project site at ohloh.net:

Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.

Update Dec 4 2008: Mambo 5 movements
Update Sept 19 2008: Wildflower impressions and links

The latest movements in the Mambo 5 project ( Nov 25th 2008 ) -

> When are we going to get this mambo 5 thing started? What's the first step?

We are starting just now ;)

I'll get the release notes ready for Monday ...

Updated Oct 29 2008: added 68KB, now BSD

I am not sure why it took me this long to get around to CodeIgniter ... it's a worthy and mature PHP framework but I gravitated to CakePHP for some reason. Maybe it's the CodeIgniter licensing of EllisLab, Inc..

The main link is to Oracle - Semantic Technologies Center. so far .... From the site:

Semantic Technologies are designed to extend the capabilities of information on the Web and enterprise systems to be networked in meaningful ways. ... Oracle Spatial 11g introduces the industry's first open, scalable, secure and reliable RDF management platform. Based on a graph data model, RDF triples are persisted, indexed and queried, similar to other object-relational data types.

Big, non-open, usually implemented in Java or C++.

From the About CSAIL page:

The primary mission of CSAIL ( Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory ) is research in both computation and artificial intelligence, broadly construed. It is organized into four broad research areas:

Systems covers all aspects of the building of both hardware and software computational systems

Perception and Learning includes work on the sorts of things that all people manage to do effortlessly, both emulating those abilities, and simulating their appearance.

Drools is probably the leading Open Source Java rule engine and rule management environment. It is the community version of commercial JBoss Rules. The whole operation os very solid - the Drools/JBoss Rules User Guide is among the best of any business rules product, either open source or commercial.

The following is a heavily paraphrased version of the three main points on Drools site:

Drupal has been good to me, no question about it.

I had planned to roll up my sleeves and do some PHP coding to make it work the way I wanted. But, between the Drupal core, Links and a few other modules, it pretty much does what I need already ( with maybe some more meta-data for the links ). So instead of coding PHP, I devote my time to creating content, which was the point of the exercise in the first place. It's worked very well for my purposes.

According to the Drupal web site,

Potential RDF use cases for Drupal - an excellent article about RDF in Drupal 6 - 7.

The Drupal RDF module uses the recently-rewritten ARC2 RDF Library if available but apparently does not require it.

From the drupal.org post, Semantic Search - Faceted Search and Semantic Web:

It's getting serious. Things are moving resolutely forward toward Drupal 6 and 7.

The seems to be some confusion about the difference between 'rule engines' and 'semantic web' applications.  See related link to "Semantic Web Inferencing versus Rule Engines"

Also a link to CCK-related modules.

From the project page:

Node linking and Metadata

The Relationship Manager module is intended to allow free-form links between nodes, recording not just that one page relates to another, but HOW it relates. ... The core module is made available to be extended by other modules that wish to make use of the generalized relationship management functions. Several examples of simple modules that leverage this power are provided as optional plugins.

The major plugins are:

The game's a foot.

From the Workflow-NG project page, a list of Drupal 5 modules that integrate with Workflow-NG ( other than Workflow ):

Updated: July 12 2008. more links

Sun appears to be serious about open sourcing the Java Development Kit and Virtual Machine, so it is time to consider Java as an environment for implementing Open Source rule and inference engines.

As an interpreted language, the performance and resource consumption of client and server-side solutions will probably be a critical design factor, particularly as Java-based rule engines tend to aspire to enterprise-level applications.

Updated: Nov 2 2007

There are some Javascript oldies but goodies to be found on the Web.

There was an active Javascript inference engine at CNLP ( Syracuse Univeristy ) at some point, but it may be moribund. From the site:

Some interesting possibilities that may lead to a better RETE algoritm. There are some good article suggesting directions for investigation but references on the web are still a bit thin.

Updated Sept 24 2008:

The Lanius website ( formerly known as the Drake CMS ) is up and running [ wild cheers and celebration !!! ]

They have make some of their first production releases of the small, quick and generally admirable CMS.

I'll install it and see ... stay tuned.

Updated Sept 19 2008:

From the article "Using Prolog as the fundament for applications on the semantic web":

OntoGrid provides a technical infrastructure for the rapid prototyping and development of knowledge-intensive services for the Semantic Grid.

Updated Oct 3 2008:

C++ engines are often neglected for web-based inferencing applications, but compilation is possible on non-shared hosting ...

More pattern matching and structural parsing than symbolic processing in a classical sense of an inference engine.

A nascent category for "associative" engines, neural networks and various statistical and connectionist approaches to inferencing.

An interesting development - master Smalltalk developers Stéphane Ducasse, Marcus Denker, Damien Cassou, Lukas Renggli, Alexandre Bergel and Adrian Lienhard have initiated a fork of Squeak called "Pharo". If you know the cast of characters in the Squeak world, this is a huge assortment of Smalltalk talent ... huge.

Oct 12 2008: musings about incongruity

Some useful links for PHP ...I noticed recently that for all the time I spend with PHP, I have very few links about it. I guess I don't need them, or at least I think I don't need them.

In fact, I noticed some time ago that for a putative Business Rules site, I have relatively little content about the "business end" of business rules. Is it a case of the cobbler's children going barefoot again ?

Update Nov 1 2008: ImpressCMS 1.1 released.

For most web applications, I assume PHP and mySQL as the CMS environment. Excluding big commercial C++ and Java systems, the ratio of PHP-based CMSs to all other languages combined must be at least four to one, maybe more. Slow perhaps, but PHP CMSs are easy to customize and virtually zero-configuration to deploy ( in sharp contrast to C++ and Java ).

Basic requirements for a small, general purpose CMS could be:

Browse PHP Debug package

PHP Debug - PEAR

Updated Sept 19 2008:

Good list of PHP frameworks. Are they all MVC ?

Everyone has their favorite MVC framework, but my favorites are CakePHP and CodeIgniter. CakePHP is larger and has a fuller feature set - CodeIngiter has all the basic features and a smaller footprint. Otherwise, they are very similar, even in some details.

Updated: Sept 24 2008: more links, RAP

A very thin category at the moment, but the new Drupal Rules project may help to fill it out.

The RAP project has a simple forward and backward chaining inference engine using networks of relationships rather than condition/action statements like a true rule engine.

Updated Oct 2 2008: The Mission

There is a decided dearth of good PHP open source search engine solutions, but Sphider seems to be the leading candidate these days - "a lightweight web spider and search engine written in PHP, using MySQL as its back end database".

Updated: June 20 2008

Galaxia is an activity-based workflow application, where the processes and the workflows are made of dynamic activities that must be completed to finish a task. Contrast this with a procedural system where each step in the process must be completed in order, and the power of this application becomes clear.

Useful links. They can be hard to track down sometimes.

Revised Oct 3 2008: it's still Plone as the premier Python CMS so far ... still looking.

Python is an admirable language in almost every way ( but don't get me going about 'self' in method calls - if Smalltalk programmers see 'self' all over the code, they add $10 to their hourly rate, usually well deserved ).

At any rate, Python is an admirable language - it's pure OO, very fast, great libraries, etc. In short, superior technology. If that is true, then why are there so few Python Open Source CMS packages available in the CMS market ?

Update Dec 13 20008: A few preliminary links ... and two new links on the Great Self Debate !

I remember a time not so very long ago when I was required to spend an afternoon adding "^yourself " to the end of several hundred Smalltalk methods because "that's the right way to do it". I predict that the use of self in Python method arguments will persist for much the same reason.

Revised Oct 27 2008:

Maybe I should use a pseudonym for this posting ....