Cyber Amzi!News June 2000 Contents -------- [1] Amzi! 5.0 Beta Now Ready for Download [2] Wanted: Your Feedback on Open Source [3] AstraZeneca uses Amzi! in an Expert System for Selecting Chemical Processing Agitators [4] In the Press-- Recent Articles Featuring Amzi! Prolog & WebLS Applications This newsletter is sent to Amzi! customers and anyone who has asked to receive it. If you do not want to receive future issues, please send your name and e-mail address on www.amzi.com [1] Amzi! 5.0 Beta Now Ready for Download ----------------------------------------- The 5.0 version of Amzi! Prolog + Logic Server is now available for downloading from our website, http://www.amzi.com/download Distributions are available for Windows, Linux and Solaris. The HP/UX version is available by special arrangement. These Amzi! 5.0 distributions are licensed for Personal use only, unless you have already purchased the Amzi! 4.1 Professional Edition, in which case your professional use license is extended for 5.0 at no cost. To purchase a license for Professional use, the price per developer is US$2500 per user for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP/UX). To order, please contact us on www.amzi.com. The bulk of the work done for Amzi! 5.0 has been in reworking the underlying structure of the system to better support our source code customers and to make porting and support on multiple platforms easier. As such, Amzi! 5.0 provides a better base for ongoing development that spans multiple platforms. We are also currently working on a version 5.1 (which is not available at this time). It includes the final details for full ISO compliance including replacing the existing module feature with ISO modules. It also has support for a Prolog preprocessor, which will make many integrated applications easier to write, and support for alternate syntaxes, which will make it possible to create friendlier derived rule languages with Amzi!. We're also working on enhancements to the dynamic database to make Amzi! a much better tool for very large server-side applications. Contact us on www.amzicom if you want to know more. [2] Wanted: Your Feedback on Open Source ---------------------------------------- Amzi! has always provided full source code for all the extensions and interfaces it provides (e.g. Java, VB, ODBC, sockets, CGI). We are considering more general licensing of the source code for the core system (e.g. listener, compiler, runtime). We are seeking your feedback in this area. If this subject is important to you, we would value your answers to the following questions as well as your thoughts in general. 1) Would source code be a major factor in choosing Amzi! for a project? If so, why? 2) Would you consider changing the source code yourself? For what purposes? 3) If you would modify the source code, would you incorporate new interfaces and extensions built by other users (as opposed to those directly from Amzi!)? 4) What kind of support services would you expect for the source code? What would you consider to be a fair price for those services? 5) What licensing terms would you need or want for the source code? I.E. would you want to be able to include the Amzi! development tools in your own products? The full system, or just an embedded compiler and linker? Would you want to include the Amzi! tools under your own private label (e.g. ABC Co's Rule Compiler)? What do you consider to be a fair price for the license terms you need? 6) Which of the following licenses would you favor and why: i) QPL (QT public license), ii) GPL (GNU public license), iii) LGPL (GNU library public license), iv) MPL (Mozilla public license), v) the Artistic License or vi) another license not listed here. [3] AstraZeneca uses Amzi! in Expert System for Selecting Chemical Processing Agitators ----------------------------------------------- Critical to the successful manufacture of fine chemicals is the process of mixing and stirring. However, selecting agitation systems for stirred vessels is both complex and difficult. There is a wide range of both available systems (different impellers, types of baffles etc) and of duty performed (e.g. blending, solids suspension or heating). Therefore, selecting an optimal, or even feasible, system for a given duty demands considerable experience. Adding to the complexity, a particular duty may involve satisfying several different design objectives simultaneously. With this in mind, AstraZeneca PLC, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies, created an expert system to aid in the selection of the correct agitation system. AstraZeneca selected Amzi! Prolog + Logic Server over a commercial expert system because it offers both the advantages of custom design with Prolog and seamless integration with Delphi. The drawback of a commercial shell is that its problem resolution strategy would not accurately map to the way that engineers pick agitators for stirred vessels. The strategy used to select an agitator is: collect data for objectives of agitation, assess relative importance of each, reject unsuitable systems, rank allowable systems, pick best. So it is a two-phase weighting and analysis process, which is not a way of reaching solutions with a commercial shell. Prolog alone is great for knowledge representation and reasoning. However, it does not provide good tools for implementing the easy-to-use GUI that would interact with the engineer selecting the agitator. Additionally, Prolog does not provide good support for the number-crunching aspects of the problem, the results of which are used in deciding which agitator ranks highest. Taking advantage of Amzi! Prolog + Logic Server's seamless integration of Prolog with Delphi, AstraZeneca created both a classic Windows look and feel, as well as leveraged the speed benefits Delphi offers for numerical calculations. Prolog calls Delphi to interact with the user via the GUI when it needed information, and to perform number-crunching as needed. The end-result is an intelligent GUI that is driven by a reasoning engine. The knowledge is represented using lists of ASCII strings, which can easily be modified with a text editor. Callback functions are used to build a user-friendly front end with standard Windows appearance. AstraZeneca cites additional benefits of the system. Users inexperienced in agitator system design can specify systems for most duties. Because the expert system prompts the user for relevant data, they are guided in obtaining the appropriate data for design at an early stage. (This story along with contact information and a screen shot is available on our website at http://www.amzi.com/customers/zeneca_agitator.htm). [4] In the Press-- Recent Articles Featuring Amzi! Prolog & WebLS Applications ----------------------------------------------------------------- See the May 2000 issue of the Java Report for "Developing Intelligent Systems with Java and Prolog" (featuring Amzi! Prolog + Logic Server) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Amzi! inc. 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