Data-driven Computation Versus Procedural Control
The inference engine control is based on the frequent reevaluation of the data store states, not on any static control structure of the program. The computation is often qualified as data-driven or pattern-directed in contrast to the more traditional procedural control. Rules can communicate with one another only by way of the data, whereas in traditional programming languages procedures and functions explicitly call one another. Unlike instructions, rules are not executed sequentially and it is not always possible to determine through inspection of a set of rules which rule will be executed first or cause the inference engine to terminate.
In contrast to a procedural computation, in which knowledge about the problem domain is mixed in with instructions about the flow of control—although object-oriented programming languages mitigate this entanglement—the inference engine model allows a more complete separation of the knowledge (in the rules) from the control (the inference engine).
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