Charles Forgy
Dr.
Charles L. Forgy (born
December 12,
1949 in
Texas) is a
computer scientist, known for developing the
Rete algorithm used in his
OPS5 and other
production system languages used to build
expert systems.
Forgy attended
Woodrow Wilson High School in
Dallas, Texas, and then advanced to
Arlington State College (now
University of Texas in Arlington, or UTA) graduating with a degree in
Mathematics in
1972. From there he went to
Carnegie Institute of Technology (later
Carnegie Mellon University) at
Pittsburgh, a renowned centre for study of
Artificial intelligence. While studying at Carnegie he met his future wife, Diana, whom he married in 1977. A student of
Allen Newell, he received his
Ph.D. two years later in 1979 based on the
Rete algorithm. Even though Forgy did not work directly on the
DEC XCON AI problem of configuring computers for DEC in the late 70's and early 80's, the Rete algorithm was later incorporated into the system for more speed. The XCON used the early versions of OPS (Official Production System) that migrated to OPS2 and later OPS5. DEC reported that
XCON saved at least $1M USD per year. XCON, a project headed up by
John McDermott and later shifted over to DEC programmers, was eventually composed of over 10K rules. The Rete (Latin for "network") algorithm allowed systems to run as much as 3,000 times faster in those days. The original Rete algorithm was developed under a DOD grant and, as such, is public domain.
Forgy remained at Carnegie Mellon post-graduation and worked on further improvements to
OPS5; in
1983 he formed a company called
Production Systems Technologies to develop and sell rule-based software, where he developed "
Rete II", a more efficient successor to Rete. Rete 2 enabled rulebased programs to run between 50 and 100 times faster than the original Rete algorithm, depending on the complexity of the rules and objects. (The more complex, the faster the comparative results.) Rete 2 is incorporated in CLIPS/R2 and OPSJ among others. Dr. Forgy was a founder and Chief Scientist for
Rules Power, a
Work Flow Management company founded in 2002 and based in
Boston. During that time, Forgy incorporated Rete 2 with
Relational Logic Technology, which became named "
Rete III". The performance of Rete 2 and Rete III are virtually the same but Rete III has some extensions that allow it to work more efficiently with RLT.
In
2005, RulesPower was acquired by
Fair Isaac Corporation, who obtained a license to integrate Rete III into Blaze Advisor, their own business rules product. Dr. Forgy retained the intellectual property rights to Rete 2 and his personal company,
Production Systems Technology, still sells
OPSJ and other systems that incorporate the Rete 2 algorithm.
KnowledgeBased Systems Corporation, an independent consulting company in Texas, maintains an extensive set of benchmarks for most BRMS and rulebased systems that demonstrate the effectiveness of the Rete and Rete 2 algorithms. Dr. Forgy has often described PST as a research-oriented company rather than a vendor of BRMS tools, but he does sell various rulebased tools via PST.
*
Production Systems Technologies (company founded by Forgy)*
RulesPower assets acquired by Fair Isaac*
Performance Benchmarks on several systems
