State Explosion Risks in Rule- Driven Execution Engines

Abstract

State explosion in rule-driven low-code execution engines presents a major challenge as increasing rule complexity leads to rapid growth in execution states and transitions. Existing studies have explored rule evaluation and declarative execution, but a unified understanding of how rule interactions, branching, and dependencies contribute to state space expansion remains limited. This work addresses this gap by modeling state growth as a multi-dimensional phenomenon influenced by rule chain length, branching factors, condition density, and dependency depth. The analysis demonstrates that state expansion follows non-linear patterns, with clear threshold points beyond which system performance degrades rapidly due to increased memory usage, transition overhead, and execution latency. The results provide insights into controlling state explosion through structured rule design, reduced branching, and optimized execution strategies, enabling more scalable and efficient low-code platforms.