Bob Orchard is the author of FuzzyJess, the Java-based, fuzzy logic API extension to Jess, and a veteran of many expert systems projects. In this interview, he discusses the state of artificial intelligence (AI), expert systems (ES), and the richness of possibilities for Java developers to utilize his tools for building fuzzy rule-based expert systems.

Sometimes Java's data structures use too much memory to store the data you need to store. In such situations, you can use the JNI native code interface to access native data structures. Find out how to use the STL in C++ to implement a space-efficient hashtable that works like a regular Java hashtable.

Jakarta's Digester maps data from an XML source to Java objects. Learn all about this package and its advantages over other similar APIs. Then follow a real life Digester parsing example.

Does setting up SQL Server on multiple servers mean running setup.exe over and over? No, it doesn't. With the ADS Controller, you can deploy SQL Server to many servers at once, without having to visit each machine individually.

Tiger, the next version of the J2SE SDK, features language improvements, better performance, better debugging and management, near-native GUI representation, and much more. We grab the Tiger by the tail and take a good look at what it has to offer.

Lengthy Web requests, such as those that process and format complex reports, tie up threads from the ASP thread pool. When the number of ASP requests exceeds the number of available threads, you'll see a dramatic slowdown in response time. To solve the problem, you have to make your ASP pages run faster. And to do that you need to decouple the background request processing from the requesting ASP thread. Here's how.

With SQLyog Job Agent, a multithreaded application that enables you to develop MySQL notification applications, you can automate and schedule MySQL database jobs to provide data to users when they need it—regardless of their locations.

Integrating an application server with Macromedia's ever-popular front-end solution allows for rapid development of engaging rich Internet applications. Find out just how easy it is to make Flash talk to the middle tier.

At first glance, calculating a baseline metric—an average of some measure over a specific period of time—appears to be a simple task. In reality, baseline metrics are slippery beasts, and not at all as simple as they appear.