Prolog Programming Language

History

Prolog (PROgramming LOGic) rose within the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It originally became popular with AI researchers, who know more about "what" and "how" intelligent behaviour is achieved. The philosopy behind it deals with the logical and declarative aspects. Prolog represents a fundamentally new approach to computing and became a serious competitor to LISP.

Significant Language Features

Prolog is a rich collection of data structures in the language and human reasoning, and a powerful notation for encoding end-user applications. It has its logical and declarative aspects, interpretive natur, compactness, and inherent modularity.

• Intelligent Systems - programs which perform useful tasks by utilizing artificaial intelligence techniques.
• Expert Systems - intelligent systems which reproduce decision-making at the level of a human expert.
• Natural Language Systems - which can analys and respond to statements made in ordinary language as opposed to approved keywords or menu selections.
• Relational Database Systems

Areas of Application

Prolog is the highest level general-purpose language widely used today. It is taught with a strong declarative emphasis on thinking of the logical relations between objects or entities relevant to a given problem, rather than on procedural steps necessary to solve it. The system decides the way to solve the problem, including the sequences of instructions that the computer must go through to solve it. It is easier to say what we want done and leave it to the computer to do it for us. Since a major criterion in the commercial world today is speed of performance, Prolog is an ideal prototyping language. Its concept makes use of parallel architectures. It solves problems by searching a knowledge base (or more correctly a database) which would be greatly improved if several processors are made to search different parts of the database.

Sample Programs

• Hello world!

• CIS 479 Demo Programs

Related Links

• CIS 400 Programming Languages
  Syllabus for course taught here at University of Michigan-Dearborn.
• Prolog Resource Guide
  Free Prolog implementations and FAQ from CMU AI repository.
• Brain Aid Prolog
  Parallel Prolog environment.
• IF/Prolog
  Commercial Prologs available from IF Computer.
• Prolog
  Free Prolog implementations.
• LPA-Prolog
  100 day demo version of 32 bit Win-Prolog.
• Gnu Prolog
  Prolog for several Unix platforms.

Printed References

1. Kim, Steven H. (1991). Knowledge Systems through Prolog. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
2. Moss, Chris. (1994). Prolog++: The power of Object-Oriented and Logic Programming. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Inc.

Acknowledgements

The Example program was written by the author Steven H. Kim. The information above were taken from several authors, such as Chris Moss, Steven Kim to name a few. .