Performance

 

How fast is the EZ-Xpert output? The timings listed here were obtained on a Dell Dimension 820 PC with a 2.4 ghz processor and 768 mb of RAM running Windows XP.

 

The Chess End Game test set is well known for testing induction algorithms. It consists of seven conditions which determine if the Game is Lost or Safe. The Chess648 sample file is the Cartesian product variation and contains 648 rules with seven conditions in each, for a total of 4,536 conditions in the rule base. Chess1296 is the same rule base with duplicates of all rules except the last one. Both configurations are available for download.

 

Testing Rules

In these tests, only one rule in the application is fired. Note that as the number of rules grows, the number of rules tested per second remains constant! The sample applications are not stripped down for speed – they contain Explanations, timings, and Fact File support.

 

To simulate performance in a production environment, perform consultations alternating the Facts which fire rule 1 with those that fire the last rule. The minimum time necessary to load Facts, solve a consultation by firing only the first rule, write the explanation and update the Fact file appears to about .015 seconds. On a similar test set designed to fire all of the rules, nearly 1,000 rules are fired per second.

 

Chess1296

Run

Rule Fired

Time

Rules tested per second

1

1296

.172

7534

2

1

.015

66

3

1296

.062

20,903

 

Chess 648

Run

Rule Fired

Time

Rules tested per second

1

648

.110

5890

2

1

.015

66

3

648

.032

20, 250