drools - Rules engine for spatial and temporal reasoning?

Question

I have an application that receives a number of datums that characterize 3 dimensional spatial and temporal processes. It then filters these datums and creates actions which are then sent to processes that perform the actions. Rinse and repeat.

At present, I have a collection of custom filters that perform a lot of complicated spatial/temporal calculations.

Many times as I discuss my system to individuals in my company, they ask if I'm using a rules engine.

I have yet to find a rules engine that is able to reason well temporally and spatially. (Things like: When are two 3D entities ever close? Is 3D entity A ever contained in 3D region B? If entity C is near entity D but oriented backwards relative to C then perform action D.)

I have looked at Drools, Cyc, Jess in the past (say 3-4 years ago). It's time to re-examine the state of the art. Any suggestions? Any standards that you know of that support this kind of reasoning? Any defacto standards? Any applications?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This is Spatial Reasoning... a few models but 9DE-IM is now accepted by OGC and implemented in PostGIS and other programming tools.

PostGIS implements a spatial reasoning engine based on dimensionally extended 9 intersection model... 9DE-IM..

http://postgis.refractions.net/documentation/manual-svn/ch04.html#DE-9IM check sect 4.3.6.1. Theory...

---

So does the Java Topology Suite (and Net Topology suite for C# etc)...

http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTDOC/Point+Set+Theory+and+the+DE-9IM+Matrix

In particualr check out the geometry.relate stuff.. such as

boolean isRelated = geometry.relate( geometry2, "T*T***T**" )

You can test the relationships, or filter data based on them. Works with pts, lines, polygons etc...

---

This might help on temporal stuff..

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.87.4643&rep=rep1&type=pdf