The no inference engine theory – performing conflict resolution during development

In many rule-based systems, an inference engine is a software component which reasons over rules when the application is executed. The major task performed by the inference engine is conflict resolution, which determines the sequence of the consultation. We describe a theory and the resulting development environment for performing conflict resolution during development to eliminate the inference engine for systems using propositional logic. Using verification criteria and solution strategies, we derive four classes of rules and their rule ordering strategies, allowing conflict resolution to be performed during development. The resultant procedural implementations demonstrate dramatic performance improvements for some classes of rules, testing over 20,000 rules per second on a PC.