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Expert Systems, Relational Databases and Fuzzy Logic

The three subjects of expert systems, relational databases and fuzzy logic seem to be a set of convergent technologies. Unfortunately, the people who are writing about them don't seem to see any connection between them at all.

Relational databases are about the collection of lots of mainly stable facts in a minimally redundant manner which are then used to generate the views of the data that the users need to see.

Expert Systems are about the collection of lots of rules using a small number of very precisely known bits of data, so that the computer can then apply them to the data when it changes, and tell you the consequences.

Fuzzy Logic is about being able to encode rules that contain certain types of imprecise or uncertain facts, while still being able to get useful output from the rules.

Fuzzy logic is currently being used to make imprecise queries with SQL, while expert systems and relational databases are coming together to form active databases, where the effects of updating values in the database ripple all through it as soon as you update it.