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 -------