[rules-users] Inferencing

Hi everybody, I'm currently doing my bachelor thesis on Rule engines. This includes comapring different Rule engine products. I have set up a small Java program (Conway's game of life) and I'm writing the 'engine' in different Rule engines, while keeping the same GUI,CellGrid etc. I have already made a Drools based engine. I have been studying the Rule engine subject for somewhat more then a month now. And I'm currently seeing two different developments namely the use of an inference engine and the generation of embedded code instead (Take, Visual Rules etc.) I can see some of the pro's and cons with both paradigms. But I'm wondering what opinion some of you guys have on the subject. I can see that without inferencing it is very hard (or even impossible) to keep a statefull session inside the rule engine, haven't seen a non-inferencing rule engine which does offer this possibility. And also lose features like TMS. But what would be a concrete example where a statefull session is absolutely necessary? Instead of letting the engine reason over all the facts in stateless way. And managing conflicts with a ruleflow (see Visual Rules for a nice example). I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks, Tim P.S I already read two of Mark Proctors blogs on inferencing, but while enlightening, they didn't supply me with a definitive awnser -- View this message in context: http://n3.nabble.com/Inferencing-tp435411p435411.html Sent from the Drools - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.