Product Description
This guide consists of a number of tutorials that provide detailed, comprehensive coverage of different aspects of Prolog in general, and Prolog-2 in particular. The first two thirds of the book covers facilities that exist in most DEC-10 style implementations which will in all likelihood form a major part of the forthcoming standard definition of the language. The remaining chapters deal wth the details of Prolog-2 in different environments. ... Read more

Product Description
Complex information structures are found in many disciplines including physics, genetics, biology and all branches of the information sciences. The current increasing, widespread use of information technology in all academic activities' emphasizes the need to understand how people construct and use such structures. The practices and activities found within the community of programmers provides a rich study area. The contents of this book are devoted to fundamental research that directly informs: the teaching community about some of the recent issues and problems that should help readers to increase their awareness when designing systems to support teaching, learning and using information technology; the psychology of the programming community about work in the area of learning to build, and debug programs; and the software engineering community in terms of the issues that implementors need to take into account when designing and building tools and environments for computer-based systems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The most unlikely book ever to be published
This is a wonderful book for many reasons, but the biggest wonder was that it was ever published!It documents obscure research about an obscure programming language--and the point of the research is to find out why it is so obscure!

If you are a big fan of prolog, but are still wondering why it didn't take off, this book will tell you.For me, the biggest take away messages are these:

1.The very uniformity of the syntax--which makes Prolog "beautiful" in a sense--is a source of obscurity, because since everything is just clauses, its hard to tell what any particular clause is doing.In, say, C, its easy to tell if something is a for-loop or not--the keyword "for" is right there.But in prolog, iteration over a range of values looks pretty much like any other programming statement.There is no syntactic differentiation to help you understand the semantics.

2.In order to understand a prolog program, you pretty much have to be a master of redaction criticism.For example, a prolog program to sum up the values of all the integers in a list of integers is typically written by taking the code for the member/2 function and editing it--adding here an accumulator, there a summation, etc.This is called"Skeletons and Techniques" by Lee Naish and other exponents.It is a very powerful way to develop prolog programs, but someone else wanting to understand _your_ prolog program must first understand how member/2 works, then they must work backwards from the changes you've made to it, first determining how you've edited member/2 and what your editorial changes mean, before they can understand your code.Its very tricky!

Talk about a book which isn't for everyone!But if you are in the business of designing languages, there's lots of interesting insights here just waiting to be gleaned. ... Read more

Product Description
Comprehensive introduction to a programming language that is particularly relevant for artificial intelligence and knowledge-based systems. Combines an introductory course in Prolog, with a full PC implementation of the language on the accompanying disk. Paper. 3 1/2 inch disk included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good introduction to logic programming
I have used Mastering Prolog for several years as a introductory text for undergraduate students being introduced to logic programming for the first time. I find it a very clear practical book with easy to follow exercises that logically build on one another. I feel that the previous reviewer who critised the book for it's lack of depth and shallow treatment of expert systems was missing the point. As an introductory text it is precisely its simplicity that makes it so useful, compared with many others, forthe beginner. The book is not a guide to building expert systems. This topic is merely covered in order to illustrate the kind of application that the language is appropriate for, and to suggest, at an appropriate level, how the contruction of such applications may progress. My only criticism is that there remain some errors in one or two of the exercise solutions.

Good introduction to logic programming
I have used Mastering Prolog for several years as a introductory text for undergraduate students being introduced to logic programming for the first time. I find it a very clear practical book with easy to follow exercises that logically build on one another. I feel that the previous reviewer who critised the book for it's lack of depth and shallow treatment of expert systems was missing the point. As an introductory text it is precisely its simplicity that makes it so useful, compared with many others, forthe beginner. The book is not a guide to building expert systems. This topic is merely covered in order to illustrate the kind of application that the language is appropriate for, and to suggest, at an appropriate level, how the contruction of such applications may progress. My only criticism is that there remain some errors in one or two of the exercise solutions.

Weak and shallow - very expensive for what it is
The book covers nothing in depth. Its attempt at offering tuition on how to build expert systems hardly scratched the surface. Generally a very dissapointing buy. ... Read more

Product Description
A practical introduction to symbolic computing and denotational programming is offered in this book. The first part covers programming, and the second part addresses symbolic computing in such areas as game playing, language translation, and theorem proving. For each topic, there are example problems, with proposed solutions, followed by working programs using the techniques presented earlier in the text. Two programs using a denotational approach accompany each of the applications in symbolic computing, one in LISP and one in PROLOG. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Splendid!
Robert Mueller has the best, most understandable and down right well written book on this subject I have ever laid eyes on.This book helped me understand more about the subject without ever making it sound tedious ordull.Thank you Mr. Mueller.Admirable work.

Well written and straight to the point
This book is useful for those that need more information about LISP and Prolog, and for my class regarding the subject at OSU, it makes perfect sense

Symbolic Computing With Lisp and Prolog is a very useful.
I prefer Symbolic Computing With Lisp and Prolog much more than other books which I have read concerning the subject. It is quite informative, and even has a touch of humor from time to time.

Symbolic Computing With Lisp and Prolog is a very useful.
I prefer Symbolic Computing With Lisp and Prolog much more than other books which I have read concerning the subject. It is quite informative, and even has a touch of humor from time to time. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume contains papers presented at the secondinternational workshopon extensions of logic programming,which was held at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science,Stockhom, January 27-29, 1991.The 12 papers describe and discuss several approaches toextensions of logic programminglanguages such as PROLOG, aswell as connections between logic programmingand functionalprogramming, theoretical foundations ofextensions,applications, and programming methodologies.The firstworkshop in this series was held in T}bingen in1989 and its proceedings areavailable as LNCS 475. Thethird workshop will be held in Bologna in 1992. ... Read more

Product Description
This tutorial demystifies one of the most important yet poorly understood aspects of logic programming, the Warren Abstract Machine or WAM. The author's step-by-step construction of the WAM adds features in a gradual manner, clarifying the complex aspects of the design and providing the first detailed study of WAM since it was designed in 1983.

Developed by David H. D. Warren, the WAM is an abstract (nonphysical) computer that aids in the compilation and implementation of the Prolog programming language and offers techniques for compiling and optimizing symbolic computing that can be generalized beyond Prolog. Although the benefits of the WAM design have been widely accepted, few have been able to penetrate the WAM. This lucid introduction defines separate abstract machines for each conceptually separate part of the design and refines them, finally stitching them together to make a WAM. An index presents all of the critical concepts used in the WAM. It is assumed that readers have a clear understanding of the operational semantics of Prolog, in particular, of unification and backtracking, but a brief summary of the necessary Prolog notions is provided.

Contents: Introduction. Unification—Pure and Simple. Flat Resolution. Prolog. Optimizing the Design. Conclusion. Appendixes. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is a presentation of artificial intelligence problem-solving techniques. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first reference manual on the ISO international standard of the programming language Prolog. Prolog was the first logic programming language and is used in many areas in industry, such as computer aided design and manufacturing, software engineering, multimedia and documentation, AI systems and databases (expert systems, knowledge bases, man-machine interfaces, natural language analysis), and application fields like transportation, telecommunications, and banking. The book contains a comprehensible full description of the standardized language together with an executable specification. It enables system developers, application programmers and Prolog users to work with any standard conforming processor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A must for any Prolog programmer
This book is a must for anyone doing serious Prolog programming. The book itself is a standard in clarity, concision and rigor.

There are minor drawbacks:
1. Poor paper quality and binding. Any programmer striving to write portable Prolog programs would use it heavily and the poor qualify shows off in just a month of daily use. Unfortunately, the form is not at the same level as the content.
2. The predefined predicates lack a listing by page (although they are listed by topic). This makes finding a certain particular predicate rather cumbersome when looked up frequently.
3. Minor typos.

Otherwise, no one serious about Prolog can afford to overlook this book.

Prolog:The Standard:Reference Manual
The title of this book accurately describes its organization and content. Although numerous examples of each language feature are given throughout the book, it is definitely not intended to be a tutorial.For that purpose,a beginning user of PROLOG should look elsewhere.

However, the book fillsa definite need in the PROLOG programming community. Many dialects of thislangugage exist in the academic world and this book provides standarddefinitions and usage of PROLOG syntax and functionality. Hopefully, itwill provide more uniformity for the various implementations of PROLOG whenreferenced by the compiler writers. But it is definitely useful forprogrammers who are writing PROLOG programs. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume contains the proceedings of two Russianconferences on logicprogramming, held in 1990 in Irkutskand in 1991 in St. Petersburg. The aim of the conferenceswas to bring together researchers from the Russian and theinternational logic programming communities. Topics coveredin thevolume include: logic programming, automated theoremproving, non-monotonic reasoning, applications ofmathematical logic to computer science, deductivedatabases,implementation of declarative concepts, and programminginnon-classical logics.This is the first volume to represent activity in the fieldof logic programming in the countries of the formerSovietUnion. ... Read more

Product Description
This book aims to teach PROLOG to computer literate students with no prior experience, to a level where they can attach major applications projects using PROLOG. The approach throughout is tutorial, explaining most details in a step-by-step fashion with the aid of many figures. This book differs from other PROLOG texts in that it teaches the language as a means towards the user's end rather than looking at the language as an end in itself. An engineering approach is taken to show the reader how to use PROLOG as a tool to engineer solutions to problems, notably in the latter part of the book as a means towards building Expert Systems. Features Include: extensive use of figures based on a graphical language to explain the PROLOG search process including backtracking; the step-by-step approach of a patient tutor makes the text suitable for self study; extensive coverage of PROLOG as a means towards building Expert Systems. ... Read more

Product Description
This book integrates two technologies that have hitherto been almost disparate, namely Image Processing (IP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the implementation of a fifth generation of industrial vision systems. To date there is no other published work which merges image processing ideas into either of the two main AI languages, Lisp and Prolog. Image processing specialists and Prolog enthusiasts will particularly enjoy reading this book. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume presents the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Logic Programming and Automated Reasoning, held aboard the ship "Marshal Koshevoi" on the Dnieper near Kiev, Ukraine in July 1994. The LPAR conferences are held annually in the former Soviet Union and aimed at bringing together researchers interested in LP and AR.
This proceedings contains the full versions of the 24 accepted papers evaluated by at least three referees ensuring a program of highest quality. The papers cover all relevant aspects of LP and AR ranging from theory to implementation and application. ... Read more

Product Description
In the last decade, Artificial Intelligence (AI) processing has received increasing attention, involving a wide spectrum of scientific and technological areas. Two main high-level languages have emerged as the most broadly used for AI applications: Prolog among the logic languages and Lisp among the functional languages. Both have created a demand for research on dedicated architectures able to support high performance non-numerical processing. VLSI microelectronics technology has played, and continues to play, a vital role in the developments, since it offers the possibility of concentrating a tremendous computation capability in compact, low cost, fast devices.

This book describes the design of a VLSI Prolog processor, starting from the language execution model down to the abstract machine and the physical implementation. Each design stage is analyzed by performing quantitative evaluations of the influence of the architectural choices on the overall performance. Moreover, the state of the art on Prolog machines is described as reference for the adopted solutions. Special care has been taken in the description of the execution model, derived from the Warren Abstract Machine, and in the analysis of the design methodology developed for this application. If silicon compilation techniques are used, the design methodology becomes a general method for the synthesis of High Level Language processors. In this environment all the problems related to the VLSI implementation are analyzed and discussed in terms of costs and performance. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is not an introduction to Prolog. It is an explanation of how software systems written in Prolog are constructed and what they can do. The book would be of interest to those who are planning to write large programs of more than 500 lines, those specifically interested in programming assistance systems, editors and relational databases and those who are interested in studying practical examples of programming techniques using Prolog. The first part of the book is a comparison of several Prolog implementations. The following three sections are concluded with complete listing of the programs under discussion . These programs include a Prolog Programming Assistance System (PAS) which is designed to facilitate programming in Prolog, how an editor can be designed using Prolog and how to design a relational database using Prolog. The last section is an introduction to writing expert systems in Prolog and a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using Prolog when it is considered as a programming language or as an inference system. ... Read more

Product Description
This book aims to introduce readers, familiar with procedural programming language such as Pascal, to the ideas of declarative programming. The reader is introduced to most of the features of the Prolog language. The relationship between Prolog and the formal specification language is emphasized as is the role which Prolog plays in the software life cycle. The book also discusses how Prolog can be used to implement object-oriented concepts. ... Read more

Product Description
The research described in this book addresses the semantic gap between logic programming languages and the architecture of parallel computers - the problem of how to implement logic programming languages on parallel computers in a way that can most effectively exploit the inherent parallelism of the language and efficiently utilize the parallel architecture of the computer.Following a useful review of other research results, the first project explores the possibilities of implementing logic programs on MIMD, nonshared memory massively parallel computers containing 100 to 1,000 processing elements. The second investigates the possibility of implementing Prolog on a typical SIMD machine, called a Distributed Processor Array.The author's objectives are to define a parallel computational paradigm (the Extended Cellular-Dataflow Model) that can be used to create a Parallel Prolog Abstract Machine as a general starting point for implementing logic programming languages on parallel computers, to exploit the different types of parallelism of these programs, to define an efficient parallel logic machine, to explore the possibilities of implementing logic programming languages on array processors, such as the DAP, to invent parallel implementation techniques for effectively executing Prolog on the DAP, and to define a parallel extension of Prolog that is able to utilize the processor aggregate of the DAP for effectively solving numerical subproblems within logic programsPeter Kacsuk is with Multilogic Computing Ltd. of Budapest, Hungary. ... Read more