Metarule is the rule language used by XmlMiner. As you'd expect, it's created in XML, and is fully standards compliant.
Metarule is created as the output of data or text mining and can be used by our inference engine to process new data. It can also be created by hand using our interactive editor.
Metarule represents knowledge in the form of fuzzy logic production rules. These can be of 3 different forms:
- if <conditions> then <output> will be <category>
- if <conditions> then <output> will be <fuzzy set>
- if <conditions> then <output> will be <arithmetic expression>
The rules can contain both logical and numerical elements: you can calculate the value of expressions and then use them as the source of comparisons in logical expressions. Using type 3 rules you can use logical expressions to decide which arithmetic expression applies in a particular case. The language supports fuzzy sets and fuzzy numbers.
Metarule contains a data dictionary section that permits you to define the inputs and outputs used by a rule set. Inputs and outputs are typed, and the type of the outputs defines the rule forms that can be used.
Data types for inputs are: categorical, numeric, textual, arity and presence. The latter two types are used in structure mining. the textual data type permits text mining of embeded text items in Xml data.
Outputs can be categorical, numeric, arity and presence.
Metarule is a language that has developed over several years. It's expressive and complex, as you can see from the Schema definition below. However, because of its structure it's very simple to use, especially if you make use of our interactive guided editor.