A computer system, and its parallel and serial implementations, its serial and parallel network and multi-processor configurations, with tight and loose coupling among processors. The computer system has a CAM coupled to the computer system or imbedded therein. CAM requests may be processed serially, or as parallel queries and coupled with PAPS (Parallel Associative Processor System) capabilities (P-CAM). The computer system may be configured as an expert system preferably having combined tuple space (TS) and CAM (content addressable memory) resources, an inference engine and a knowledge base. As an expert system, improvements for production processing are provided which surpass prior art performance represented by RETE and CLIPS. An inferencing process for production systems is disclosed, and a process for working memory element assertions. The computer system is provided with a language construct which is language independent in the form of a sub-set paradigm having three basic operators and three basic extensions. The basic primitive sub-set paradigm including OUT(); IN() and READ(). Extensions of said basic sub-set are Sample(); SampleList(); and ReadList(). These primitives may be used with LINDA, and with various compilers. EVAL of LINDA is not used but instead the sub-set paradigm is used with CAM for tuple space operations in data base applications. The language construct paradigm is use to envelope and control CAM operations.