CMP.BARC@R20.UTEXAS.EDU.UUCP (05/28/86)
At a recent AI conference, copies of the April 86 issue of the monthly
news- letter "Expert Systems Strategies" were being distributed.
Almost 14 of the 16 pages dealt with defining "mid-sized tools" and
comparing three of them -- M.1, NExpert and Personal Consultant. The
overall comparison was informative and I think would provide valuable
information to potential buyers of these or any expert system tools.
However, there were a number of shortcomings that made me wonder
whether the newletter came close to justifying its $20+ price per
issue ($247 per year).
First, the comparison was at best on a par with those found in PC
World, Byte, MacUser, etc. But those magazines give you 75-200 pages
of information for $3-4. Of course, they have 75-200 pages of
advertising to help keep their prices down. But the ads are useful
too, and the absence of advertising in "ES Strategies" has not bought
it any apparent degree of independence. The authors of the comparison
(Brian Sawyer and Paul Harmon) seem to be very careful not to step
very hard on anyone's toes. They point out shortcomings, but in an
overly nice fashion. They end up recommending all three products to
various markets. (I would be hard-pressed to recommend one, perhaps
two, of them to anyone.)
Another complaint with "ES Strategies" is the number of errors. The
worst of these concerns a small knowledge base, called Beta, that was
used to test the features of the various systems. Beta is fully
defined, and for each system, a partial representation is shown. Each
representation has at least two, and as many as four, errors. Most
errors simply give variables the wrong values, while some misname
variables or actually misrepresent the knowledge. They also do some
confusing representation. E.g., there are two variables, alpha and
beta-1, which can take on the values HIGH and LOW. In one tool, they
introduce a variable alpha ranging over HIGH and LOW, and a Boolean
beta-1-high. Finally, there is some evidence that the authors did not
even test the products hands-on, especially NExpert and Personal
Consultant. The figures in the review that show the representations
are not actual screens or direct printouts from the systems.
Moreover, the two figures that clearly are copies of actual screens
come from the vendor literature and reviews in other magazines, rather
than from their own extended examples with Beta. In addition, there
is no hard performance or benchmark data.
Of course, there were two pages of "ES Strategies" besides the
mid-sized tool discussion. These were devoted to news items and a
calendar of ES events. It was rather standard fare, readily available
in InfoWorld, Datamation, etc. in the same timeframe. The news was
grouped together in one place, but was by no means exhaustive in its
coverage.
In summary, based on this issue, I might spend $10-20 for a year's
subsription, but certainly not for a single issue. Like many of the
AI tools themselves, it seems overpriced by at least an order of
magnitude. However, in case you're interested in finding out for
yourself, "Expert Systems Stragtegies" is published by
Cutter Information Corp.
1100 Massachusetts Avenue
Arlington, MA 02174-9990
Phone: (617) 648-8700
Telex: 650 100 9891 MCI UW
Dallas Webster
CMP.BARC@R20.UTexas.Edu
{ihnp4 | seismo | ctvax}!ut-sally!batman!dallas
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