Abstract: A recognition system that includes a development subsystem and production subsystem is disclosed. The development subsystem includes a user interface that enables a developer to describe the objects to be recognized and their relationships in a recognition tree; a data store system for storing the descriptions; and a technique for automatically generating a decision tree from the object descriptions. The production subsystem includes an engine for executing the tests on the input data at each node of the decision tree, traversing the decision tree, building a collection of identified objects, and finding the leaf of the decision tree that is the answer for a given input.