Knowledge Explorer News
No. 14
July 18, 1999

KE runs 3x faster

1. KE version 3.8
KE v3.8 runs about 3x faster than v3.7. The increased speed is primarily due
to three factors:

    context    -- eliminating unnecessary context switches
  conversion -- eliminating unnecessary format conversions & reparsing
  clustering -- new data structures which cluster together all the
                characteristics necessary to process events, relations,
                methods (logically the same, but much faster)

On my previously mentioned family history knowledge base, there is another
4x improvement obtained by replacing four questions by a single command.
The previous and current execution times for my 700 person / 1800 infon
knowledge base are:

                           v3.7      v3.8
    read knowledge base    69 min    21 min
    generate report        25 min     2 min
 

2. other recent changes

    !clock        new command displays date & time to nearest second
    unparse()     converts internal KR representation to external string format
                  now included with ksc command
 

3. coming soon
Icon version 9.3.2 has just been released for Linux.  The Windows version should follow soon.
New features supported in this version include:

    scrolling console window
    directory file access
    internet file access
    object oriented support