I took a nostalgic look at the Aion Rule-Based System. I used to be a consultant for this tool. Masses of potential for e-commerce, but few people seemed to 'get' what if offered. Looking back, the big problem was that programmers weren't brought up to think this way, so it wasn't that the software model was flawed, but that the organizational change of replacing database-thinkers with rule-based thinkers was too great. The more acttive companies like Firepond and Inference (now called e-Gain) are wisely positioning themselves in CRM for the timebeing.