CLIPS Question.

I think shells is the right group for this question.

I am creating my first clips program and I have had a good read through 
the Giarratano and Riley book but I think this is more of a taste/style 
issue.

I basically have two pools of objects that I need to match up based on 
how well suited they are to each other.  There are numerous ways that 
objects can match with each other, but in the end I need to end up with 
one on one pairings of objects.  (no this isn't a dating service :-) )

I have several dozen parameters that the objects could have in common, 
which can be broken into two groups: mandatory and desirable.  Of course 
the mandatory parameters must be met, which is easily done in CLIPS, but 
its the desirable parameters that have me confused.

Naturally, I want the object with the most matches in the desirable 
group.  I'm really not sure how to accomplish this.

If the desirable traits had some sort of weighting, I could create a 
rule with every trait, give it the higest salience, then make another 
rule with slightly lower salience that has one less trait in the LHS.

The only solution I have come up with seems to be very inefficient, and 
somewhat contrary to the principles of the language, but here goes (in 
pseudo code)

Add two new slots to the object, matches_mandatory and count_desirables

IF object matches all mandatory constraints
        THEN set matches_mandatory to true.

IF object matches_mandatory AND matches desirable_quality_1
        THEN set count_desirables = count_desirables + 1

IF object matches_mandatory AND matches desirable_quality_2
        THEN set count_desirables = count_desirables + 1

blah ... blah ... blah...

Finally, the object with the highest count is the right one and the rest 
can be reset for the next object that comes along (since it will have 
different desirable traits that it is looking for)

Is there a better way?

Rick