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<TITLE>The History of CLIPS</TITLE>
<LINK REV="made" HREF="mailto:clips@ghgcorp.com">
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<H1><IMG SRC="CLIPSButton.gif" ALIGN="BOTTOM" WIDTH="30" HEIGHT="27" NATURALSIZEFLAG=
"3"> The History of CLIPS</H1>
<P>The origins of the C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS) date
back to 1984 at <A HREF="http://hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov/NASA_homepage.html">NASA</A>'s
<A HREF="http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/jsc/new.html">Johnson Space Center</A>.
At this time, the Artificial Intelligence Section (later the Software Technology
Branch, <A HREF="http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/cssb/home.html">Client/Server Systems
Branch</A>, and now the Information Technology Office) had developed over
a dozen prototype expert systems applications using state-of-the-art hardware
and software. However, despite extensive demonstrations of the potential
of expert systems, few of these applications were put into regular use.
This failure to provide expert systems technology within NASA's operational
computing constraints could largely be traced to the use of LISP as the
base language for nearly all expert system software tools at that time.
In particular, three problems hindered the use of LISP based expert system
tools within NASA: the low availability of LISP on a wide variety of conventional
computers, the high cost of state-of-the-art LISP tools and hardware, and
the poor integration of LISP with other languages (making embedded applications
difficult).</P>
<P>The Artificial Intelligence Section felt that the use of a conventional
language, such as C, would eliminate most of these problems, and initially
looked to the expert system tool vendors to provide an expert system tool
written using a conventional language. Although a number of tool vendors
started converting their tools to run in C, the cost of each tool was still
very high, most were restricted to a small variety of computers, and the
projected availability times were discouraging. To meet all of its needs
in a timely and cost effective manner, it became evident that the Artificial
Intelligence Section would have to develop its own C based expert system
tool.</P>
<P>The prototype version of CLIPS was developed in the spring of 1985 in
a little over two months. Particular attention was given to making the tool
compatible with expert systems under development at that time by the Artificial
Intelligence Section. Thus, the syntax of CLIPS was made to very closely
resemble the syntax of a subset of the ART expert system tool developed
by Inference Corporation. Although originally modelled from ART, CLIPS was
developed entirely without assistance from Inference or access to the ART
source code.</P>
<P>The original intent for CLIPS was to gain useful insight and knowledge
about the construction of expert system tools and to lay the groundwork
for the construction of a replacement tool for the commercial tools currently
being used. Version 1.0 demonstrated the feasibility of the project concept.
After additional development, it became apparent that CLIPS would be a low
cost expert system tool ideal for the purposes of training. Another year
of development and internal use went into CLIPS improving its portability,
performance, functionality, and supporting documentation. Version 3.0 of
CLIPS was made available to groups outside of NASA in the summer of 1986.</P>
<P>Further enhancements transformed CLIPS from a training tool into a tool
useful for the development and delivery of expert systems as well. Versions
4.0 and 4.1 of CLIPS, released respectively in the summer and fall of 1987,
featured greatly improved performance, external language integration, and
delivery capabilities. Version 4.2 of CLIPS, released in the summer of 1988,
was a complete rewrite of CLIPS for code modularity. Also included with
this release were an architecture manual providing a detailed description
of the CLIPS software architecture and a utility program for aiding in the
verification and validation of rule-based programs. Version 4.3 of CLIPS,
released in the summer of 1989, added still more functionality.</P>
<P>Originally, the primary representation methodology in CLIPS was a forward
chaining rule language based on the Rete algorithm (hence the Production
System part of the CLIPS acronym). Version 5.0 of CLIPS, released in the
spring of 1991, introduced two new programming paradigms: procedural programming
(as found in languages such as C and Ada;) and object-oriented programming
(as found in languages such as the Common Lisp Object System and Smalltalk).
The object-oriented programming language provided within CLIPS is called
the CLIPS Object-Oriented Language (COOL). Version 5.1 of CLIPS, released
in the fall of 1991, was primarily a software maintenance upgrade required
to support the newly developed and/or enhanced X Window, MS-DOS, and Macintosh
interfaces. Version 6.0, released in the Spring of 1993, added fully integrated
object/rule pattern matching and support features for rule-based software
engineering. <A HREF="Version6.html">Version 6.1</A>, released in the Summer
of 1998, added C++ compatibility and functions for profiling performance.</P>
<P>Because of its portability, extensibility, capabilities, and low-cost,
CLIPS has received widespread acceptance throughout the government, industry,
and academia. The development of CLIPS has helped to improve the ability
to deliver expert system technology throughout the public and private sectors
for a wide range of applications and diverse computing environments. CLIPS
is being used by over 5,000 users throughout the public and private community
including: all NASA sites and branches of the military, numerous federal
bureaus, government contractors, universities, and many private companies.</P>
<P>CLIPS is now maintained as public domain software by the main program
authors who no longer work for NASA.</P>
<P>As with any large project, CLIPS is the result of the efforts of numerous
people. The primary contributors have been: Robert Savely, previous branch
chief of the STB and now chief scientist of advanced software technology
at JSC, who conceived the project and provided overall direction and support;
Chris Culbert, current chief of the Information Technology Office, who managed
the project, wrote the original CLIPS Reference Manual, and designed the
original version of CRSV; Gary Riley, who designed and developed the rule-based
portion of CLIPS, coauthored the CLIPS Reference Manual and CLIPS Architecture
Manual, and developed the Macintosh interface for CLIPS; Brian Donnell,
who designed and developed the CLIPS Object Oriented Language (COOL), coauthored
the CLIPS Reference Manual and CLIPS Architecture Manual, and developed
the previous MS-DOS interfaces for CLIPS; Bebe Ly, who was responsible for
maintenance and enhancements to CRSV and is now responsible for developing
the X Window interface for CLIPS; Chris Ortiz, who developed the Windows
3.1 interface for CLIPS; Dr. Joseph Giarratano of the University of Houston-Clear
Lake, who wrote the CLIPS User's Guide; and Frank Lopez, who designed and
developed CLIPS version 1.0 and wrote the CLIPS 1.0 User's Guide.</P>
<P>Many other individuals contributed to the design, development, review,
and general support of CLIPS, including: Jack Aldridge, Carla Armstrong,
Paul Baffes, Ann Baker, Stephen Baudendistel, Les Berke, Tom Blinn, Marlon
Boarnet, Dan Bochsler, Bob Brown, Barry Cameron, Tim Cleghorn, Major Paul
Condit, Major Steve Cross, Andy Cunningham, Dan Danley, Mark Engelberg,
Kirt Fields, Ken Freeman, Kevin Greiner, Ervin Grice, Sharon Hecht, Patti
Herrick, Mark Hoffman, Grace Hua, Gordon Johnson, Phillip Johnston, Sam
Juliano, Ed Lineberry, Bowen Loftin, Linda Martin, Daniel McCoy, Terry McGregor,
Becky McGuire, Scott Meadows, C. J. Melebeck, Paul Mitchell, Steve Mueller,
Bill Paseman, Cynthia Rathjen, Eric Raymond, Reza Razavipour, Marsha Renals,
Monica Rua, Tim Saito, Gregg Swietek, Eric Taylor, James Villarreal, Lui
Wang, Bob Way, Jim Wescott, Charlie Wheeler, and Wes White.</P>
<P><A HREF="http://www.ghg.net/clips/CLIPS.html">Back to CLIPS Home Page.</A></P>
<P><IMG SRC="blueline.gif" ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="550" HEIGHT="4" NATURALSIZEFLAG=
"3"></P>
<ADDRESS>Last Update April 6 1998 <A HREF="mailto:clips@ghg.net">Gary Riley</A></ADDRESS>
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