Toward Semantic-Based Exploration of Parallelism in Production Systems

We propose a new approach for the parallel execution of production system programs. This approach embodies methods of decomposition abstraction using declarative mechanisms. Application semantics can then be exploited to achieve a much higher degree of concurrency. In this paper we present the underlying object-based framework of production systems and discuss the ensuing semantic-based dependency analysis technique. In particular, we define a new notion of functional dependency to characterize associative relationships among data objects, which can be used to determine concurrently executable rules. A byproduct of this research is a new technique for rapid system development and evaluation. the technique eliminates the possible inaccurancy of simulation as well as the high cost of full-fledged system implementation.