A production system describes a set of condition-action rules to be applied in given situations. At the simplest level this could just be a set of if-then commands, but usually implies a more complicated arrangement such as that employed in Expert System shells such as CLIPS which do pattern-matching and unification of pre-conditions written in a predicate logic-like language over a database of facts. CLIPS is a forward-chaining production system, whereas Prolog is a form of backward-chaining production system (i.e., it tries to reason backwards from a goal to find facts that support it, rather than reasoning from known facts to find their consequences).
[ Category Concept | Category AI ]