1986 Reports

The OPS Family of Production System Languages

Pasik, Alexander J.

Production systems are widely used for the development of expert systems. The OPS family of languages comprise a set of low-level production system interpreters suitable for a large class of problem domains. They provide maximum flexibility at the expense of high-level functionality such as explanation and knowledge acquisition facilities. The languages differ with respect to their expressive power and efficiency. A description of the evolution of the languages together with an analysis of their differences provides insight into the current state of the art of production system language design. While none of the languages is clearly superior to the others, it is conceivable to combine the best features of each language in a future implementation.