Latin for network.
A specialized graph data structure used in expert system shells and production systems, such as CLIPS and Jess.
[ ... give overview of details ... ]
[ Beta/Alpha nodes... node memory ... many object/many match ...]
[ ... Original Forgy article in Artificial Intelligence Journal ... ]
The citation for the original article is:
C. Forgy, RETE: A fast algorithm for the many pattern/many object pattern match problem, Artificial Intelligence, 19 (1982), pp 17-37.
Unfortunately, you can't get this article anywhere on-line. You'll have to trawl your local University Library.
Here is a paper comparing RETE and TREAT that is available on-line http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/nayak88comparison.html