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From: srt@aero.org (Scott TCB Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.shells
Subject: KES Timing Result
Message-ID: <7642@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de>
Date: 13 Mar 91 21:53:09 GMT
Sender: shell@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
Lines: 35
Approved: shell@dfki.uni-kl.de
Posted-Date: Mon Mar 18 09:53:28 GMT 1991

I recently received an evaluation copy of KES from A&E software.  KES
is an expert system shell which includes the usual inference engine
and in addition a diagnosis system that tries to find best matches
between symptoms and disease descriptions.

The KES developer interface seemed a bit quirky at first, but I quickly
got accustomed to the style.  The interface is dual menu/editor, which
means the developer can abandon the menu system at any time in favor
of typing.  That's a big plus.  For any serious kb development, nobody
wants to be pulling down menus.

My main interest was speed.  I've been comparing a number of expert
systems.  The test consists of repeatedly firing an isolated rule.
This is hardly indicative of realistic knowledge bases, and is only 
intended to give a general feeling for the speed of the inference
engine.  I have neither the time nor energy to do more realistic tests,
but I encourage you to undertake the task if you are interested.

All test were done on a VAXstation 3100 running VMS.

	Shell				Speed (rule firings/minute)

	CLIPS				49,000
	KES				11,500
	ART-IM				5500
	Nexpert 1.1			4000
	G2				1700

From this test, KES would appear to be one of the most efficient
commercial expert system shells.  Given the comprehensive user
interface and substantial documentation, I think KES bears
consideration for any project, and especially for projects where 
processing speed is a consideration (i.e., real-time diagnosis).

					-- Scott Turner