I cannot comment on this for "it = Rete", but virtual machine-like models for matching are not that un-common, from PROLOG (WAM = Warren Abstract Machine) to re

I cannot comment on this for "it = Rete", but virtual machine-like models for matching are not that un-common, from PROLOG (WAM = Warren Abstract Machine) to regular expressions. Stretching things slightly, SQLite's SQL engine also technically is a byte-code interpreter of a DSL VM.