What do you mean by more general? Data in nodes in the RETE algorithm can be anything.

I highly recommend reading "Production Matching for Large Learning Systems"[0] as it was accessible enough for me to try to make a basic RETE implementation while learning C++ and playing around with several other technologies I was unfamiliar with[1].

[0]http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/1995/CMU-CS-95-11...

[1]https://github.com/cjslep/cpp-rete-prototype (awful, abandoned prototype)

I've wondered about this as well. I'd want to cover ZDDs in addition to Rete (forward and back chaining).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-suppressed_decision_diagr...