What is GURU?
Francois Colmant
Thanks for help.
David G. Mitchell
Francois Colmant <fcol...@vub.ac.be> wrote:
>Did someone hear about GURU, supposed to be a developpement software for expert systems???
>Thanks for help.
GURU is a kind of 4GL. It includes relational database,
spreadsheet, and rule-based expert system capabilities
within a general purpose programming language.
The producer is Micro Data Base Systems, better known
commercially for the MDBS-III relational database system.
David
Jayesh Sahasi [MSAI]
>spreadsheet, and rule-based expert system capabilities
>within a general purpose programming language.
>
>The producer is Micro Data Base Systems, better known
>commercially for the MDBS-III relational database system.
>
BAD at memory management, and the MDBS folks aren't really a helpful
bunch, so if you're condidering this software package, I'd suggest you
reconsider,...IT is a BAD choice!
J. Sahasi
AI (GURU) programmer
HGO Technology, Inc.
Cameron Laird
.
.
Let me round out this picture a bit. I'm a former employee
of MDBS, Inc. In 1989, I resigned my position as Director,
with technical responsibility for Guru and other products,
to construct custom applications using Guru. I have a lot
of affection for the people of MDBS and the products on which
and with which I worked, but I have no particular stake in
the financial success of the company, as my current profes-
sional offerings are in (mostly--I still use Guru at home)
different directions. Moreover, the information I give
below is from my memory, and in no way informed by current
MDBS, Inc. marketing or policies. Write postm...@mdbs.com
for the company's side.
MDBS III, MDBS IV, and Titanium are successive releases of a
*network* database management system. They are *not* rela-
tional; the model is more general than the relational one,
and perhaps best understood in 1995 as a high-performance
delivery of parts of an object-oriented DBMS. However,
both MDBS and third parties offer tools that give relational
views of MDBS databases.
Guru is an integrated development environment, or "shell"
(hence my re-targetting follow-ups), which does indeed offer
a fourth-generation procedural language, forms management,
communications, natural language front ends, a spreadsheet,
relational database manager, and text processor. Among the
native constructs in the 4GL are fuzzy variables, rules, and
inference methods. As I knew it in the 1980s, Guru did all
this in much less than 640K of memory; thus, it was ideal for,
say, a Federal agency that wanted to deploy applications which
implement regulations for a thousand banks across the country,
on very low-end hardware. In this and other real-life ex-
amples, Guru is a marvelously cost-effective and maintainable
way to deliver expert-system solutions. Guru has not, to the
best of my knowledge, participated in the bloatware race to
follow Microsoft's Windows lead of dictating that variable
fonts, OLE communications, ... are important. The Guru I use
looks primitive by comparison to, say, Microsoft Word, but it
runs on my 1984-era home PCs, makes expert systems develop-
ment very accessible, and provides a uniformity and
orthogonality in its development environment from which Bor-
land and others still might learn.
I certainly have experience with products that are bad at
memory management. I have no evidence that Guru is so. I'd
welcome details on your experience with the version you ap-
parently tested. I'm also forwarding a copy of this to
Brian Straight, who has, if I remember correctly, product
responsibilities for Guru at MDBS. I know MDBS employees as
generally thoughtful and helpful, but perhaps I see a differ-
ent side than do you. If Guru's niche matches your needs, and
you are having trouble communicating with MDBS on a business
level, please do let me know, and perhaps I can give some tips
on how to expedite your contacts.
--
Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
cla...@Neosoft.com +1 713 267 7966
cla...@litwin.com +1 713 996 8546