1. A system for scalable, rule-based processing, the system comprising: a processor; and storage coupled to the processor, wherein the storage stores computer program instructions, and wherein the computer program instructions are executed by the processor to: construct a plurality of automatons corresponding to a plurality of trigger rules and a plurality of word lists that are employed by the trigger rules; evaluate any of the plurality of trigger rules with respect to an input document by: selecting any of the automatons to evaluate a given one of the plurality of trigger rules, parsing the input document using the selected automatons, determining whether conditions of the given trigger rule are met, identifying any actions that are associated with the given trigger rule, and display in a rule tracing any of the plurality of trigger rules that are evaluated, together with indicia for different portions of the displayed trigger rules indicating an evaluation result of each of the different portions.
1. A system for scalable, rule-based processing, the system comprising: a processor; and storage coupled to the processor, wherein the storage stores computer program instructions, and wherein the computer program instructions are executed by the processor to: construct a plurality of automatons corresponding to a plurality of trigger rules and a plurality of word lists that are employed by the trigger rules; evaluate any of the plurality of trigger rules with respect to an input document by: selecting any of the automatons to evaluate a given one of the plurality of trigger rules, parsing the input document using the selected automatons, determining whether conditions of the given trigger rule are met, identifying any actions that are associated with the given trigger rule, and display in a rule tracing any of the plurality of trigger rules that are evaluated, together with indicia for different portions of the displayed trigger rules indicating an evaluation result of each of the different portions. 9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the computer program instructions are executed by the processor to: identify text patterns that appear in the trigger rules and extract their ranges, convert the ranges into sets analyze the sets to define non-overlapping sets, allocate a unique set-ID to each of the non-overlapping sets, revise the text patterns in accordance with the non-overlapping sets, construct an automaton for each pattern, where the set-IDs are used for transition from state to state, merge the pattern automatons into a single master automaton, convert the master automaton into a deterministic, minimal state FSM, and create a two-stage table that maps Unicode characters to their set-IDs.