Basic Concepts

Data Structures

The core data structure in RL3 is a Factsheet. Inputs and outputs are represented in the form of facts in Factsheets in RL3.

Each fact contains the following key fields:

• Label is a name of a fact. It is allowed to have several facts with the same label;
• Text is a source of a textual statement represented by a fact;
• Position is a reference to a particular statement in the text;
• Weight is a float number assigned to the fact by a knowledge expert.

Each fact may also contain its own Factsheet representing the hierarchical facts. In this case the sub-facts can be addressed by a label path. For instance, a fact person may contain sub-facts first_name and last_name with label paths person.first_name and person.last_name respectively.

Program

In general an RL3 program is a collection of rules. During execution of the program, an RL3 engine matches rules and facts. When a particular rule and fact are matched, the engine executes the action part of the rule. As a result the new facts are created (asserted) in the current or a new Factsheet depending on the selected execution mode (execute or update).

For instance, in an entity extraction task an input Factsheet may contain the only fact named text and an output Factsheet may contain several facts (annotations) related to the found entities.