Patent ID: 8078564

Claim:
A method of performing forward chaining in a ruleset to be performed on a computing system, the computing system comprising a processor and a memory, the method comprising: defining a chaining behavior property of the ruleset that governs forward chaining for a plurality of rules of the ruleset, the chaining behavior property having a value of one of full, update only or never, wherein the ruleset comprises a first rule of the plurality of rules of said ruleset, the first rule dependent upon a first data object; using the processor, executing the first rule; identifying a second rule of the plurality of rules of the rules set in which execution of the second rule would affect the first data object, the second rule dependent upon a second data object, the second data object was affected by execution of the first rule; if the value of the chaining behavior property is set to full, reevaluating the second rule; if the value of the chaining behavior property is set to update only, preventing forward chaining, by default; and if the value of the chaining behavior property is set to never, preventing forward chaining in the ruleset.