Re: Storing data and code in a Db with LISP-like interface

From: Alvin Ryder <alvin321_at_telstra.com>
Date: 22 Apr 2006 18:47:24 -0700
Message-ID: <1145756844.109496.314510_at_v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>


Nick Malik [Microsoft] wrote:

> "Mikito Harakiri" <mikharakiri_nospaum_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1145635106.226915.317380_at_e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> > Alvin Ryder wrote:
> >> In addition to RM like representations they [prolog and lisp] can also
> >> represent
> >> knowledge for rule based expert systems, frame based reasoning, case
> >> based reasoning, various abstract data types, graphs, natural language
> >> grammers, machine learning ...
> >
> > Wow, a tool that excels at so many things! There must be something
> > wrong with the industry that have seen puny adoption of both.
> >
>
> The problem, I believe, is not with the language. It is with the fact that
> it is an outgrowth of trying to solve problems that researchers find
> interesting, rather than solving problems that business and industry find
> interesting. Few systems have made the leap from one to the other.
>
> As an Enterprise Architect, I work with business systems that do things like
> track items in the supply chain and manage billing in a way that enforces
> policy or encourages the behavior of the most productive partners. Simple
> stuff with complex rules that business folks have been doing for decades.
> The most interesting problems are operational concerns: make it work
> efficiently for tens of thousands of things.
>
> Prolog is more appropriate for design problems, not operational problems
> (although a great deal of passion surrounds the concepts for combining the
> two, little has happened). My guess: the design problems are the ones that
> people would rather do, and not give away to their computer.
>
> So it is a powerful language that does things that people don't want it to
> do, but doesn't do things that people want computers to do. It is not
> dead, but it is not exactly thriving either.
>
> I'm convinced that the greatest future for Prolog is in framework
> implementations like P#, where the prolog language can be used by C# and can
> use C# objects, which gives you access to all of the features of an
> object-oriented language that is closely allied with commercial RDBMS and
> XML heirarchical data models, and all the geeky stuff that we talk about in
> programming forums. That way, you can use Prolog for the things that it
> does well, but for the rest of the problem, use C#, and through C#, use all
> the other stuff.
>

Hi Nick,
P# sounds very interesting, I'll check it out. Extending, integrating or otherwise assimilating prolog is what I had in mind. Prolog seems to do the kinds of things Neo talks about but of course it has its own problems, if all goes well P# plus C# would be the best of both worlds.

Cheers.

> --
> --- Nick Malik [Microsoft]
> MCSD, CFPS, Certified Scrummaster
> http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik
>
> Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this forum are my own, and not
> representative of my employer.
> I do not answer questions on behalf of my employer. I'm just a
> programmer helping programmers.
> --
Received on Sun Apr 23 2006 - 03:47:24 CEST

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