What is Jess?
Jess is a tool for building a type of intelligent software called Expert Systems. An Expert System is a set of rules that can be repeatedly applied to a collection of facts about the world. Rules that apply are fired, or executed. Jess uses a special algorithm called Rete to match the rules to the facts. Rete makes Jess much faster than a simple set of cascading if.. then statements in a loop. Jess was originally conceived as a Java clone of CLIPS, but nowadays has many features that differentiate it from its parent. You can learn more about expert systems from the Expert Systems FAQ (which hasn’t been updated in quite a while.
