This is a Big Deal.<p>Remember though that in the old A.I. there were two approaches. One was Prolog, based on backwards chaining, the other one was the expert system shells based on production rules.<p>The production rules are still around in systems like Drools, IBM ILOG, FairIssac, etc. 50% of the time you find "enterprise" customers are happy with "business rules" and the other 50% of the time the people think it is the spawn of Cthulhu.<p>It's time for something new that gets consistently good results.