[mod.ai] Review - Spang Robinson Report 3.2

E1AR0002@SMUVM1.BITNET.UUCP (02/28/87)

Summary of the Spang Robinson Report
February 1987, Vol. 3, No. 2

Development Tools Migrate From Micro to Mainframe

Discussion of the trend for companies selling expert system software for IBM
PC's to put their systems on higher level machines such as minis and mainframes
and vice versa.

Some companies are porting major applications to microcomputer tools that
ostensibly offer "less functionality."  Examples of this are a paint
manufacturing application ported from KEE to Insight and another port
from Inference's ART to ACORN.
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Connecting to the Corporate Database

KEE connection provides an interface with the SQL query language.  A data base
relation maps into a class with a database attribute mapping into a slot.
Data is downloaded from the database as needed to solve the problem.
Projects to directly integrate the expert system into the database include
Postgres at Berkeley, Probe at Computer Corporation of America and
Starburst at IBM.  The prices for development versions of the system
range from $18,000 to $45000 with delivery versions ranging from $3000
to $18,750 depending upon size of VAX.

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Shorts

Hitachi, IBM Japan and Carnegie Mellon are developing a multi-lingual machine
translation system.  They have already developed a system for analyzing
the natural language utility specifications.

Fuji Electric has developed an expert system to control turbines for a thermal
power generation system.

Also, thermostats are selected and configured for Tohoku oil.

Fanac plans to build an intelligent robot integrating three-dimensional
vision and touch sensors.

Matsushita is developing a LISP machine with over 50 times the power of
a VAX 8600.

Expertelligence is selling an application builder for the Macintosh for
non-programming users.

Applied Expert Systems (APEX) has laid off a number of employees.
They are selling a system to help financial institutions expand client
relationships.

Digitalk has announced a new release of Smalltalk/V.  Extensions provide
EGA capabilities, multiprocessing, DOS call features and music.

Teknowledge reports revenues of $10,867,7000 for the latter half of
1986.

Symbolics will be financing Whitney/Demos, a Los Angeles-based developer
of computer graphics and animation technology.  Symbolics will be getting
marketing rights to various in-house programs of Whitney/Demos and will
be providing them with various graphic workstations

Europeans spent $200 million on expert system development.  Ovum sells
a complete report on European expert system development for $495.00.

Halbrecht associates predicts a great deal of senior and mid-level turnover
of AI professionals.

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Review of the Sixth International Workshop on Expert Systems and
Their Applications (Proceedings).