in reply to Query database in Prolog

I'll run the full SWI prolog engine here and load the above program, I do this because I cannot get AI::Prolog to work with compound queries that I need.

This is due to the limited grammar which AI::Prolog supports. Changing your query to a rule will permit this. Add the following rule to the mytables file:

city_usr(City, Name, Id) :- city(City, City_ID), usr(City_ID, Name, Id).

Then you can run the shell:

AI-NeuralNet-Simple-0.03 $ aiprolog mytables.pro Welcome to AI::Prolog v 0.732 Copyright (c) 2005, Curtis "Ovid" Poe. AI::Prolog comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This library is free so +ftware; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl +itself. Type '?' for help. ?- listing. 1. city_usr/3: city_usr(A, B, C) :- city(A, D), usr(D, B, C). 2. usr/3: usr(1, John, 1). usr(1, Marry, 2). usr(2, Eva, 3). usr(3, Zby, 4). 3. city/2: city('New York', 1). city(London, 2). city(Warsaw, 3). listing Yes ?- city_usr('New York', User, ID). city_usr('New York', John, 1) ; city_usr('New York', Marry, 2) ; No ?-

There are other techniques, but that's the easiest.

As for why databases don't support Prolog, there are a variety of reasons for that. The primary reason is that DBMS don't really handle the relational model all that well. Queries frequently return bags instead of sets, SQL does not handle recursion well -- a core requirement of Prolog -- and Prolog allows lists, something databases also don't handle well for a single column.

Querying databases is something I would like to have in AI::Prolog, but in a more general nature. However, what if you've retrieved 15 out of 20 results and the engine backtracks over your function? You need to be able to add previous results to the AI::Prolog::KnowledgeBase and fetch them from there, if appropriate. Only if they are not found should subsequent results be pulled from the database.

To handle this, we'd need some way of registering external functions and having them call the correct primitive from AI::Prolog::Engine::Primitives (a primitive for external functions would need to be added). There's also the question of side effects. What happens when you backtrack over a predicate which deletes file? diotalevi and I have discussed much of this, but regrettably, I'm terribly busy at work and don't have time to work on this.

Cheers,
Ovid

New address of my CGI Course.

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Re^2: Query database in Prolog
by zby (Vicar) on Dec 29, 2005 at 21:31 UTC
    What I was imagining was using Prolog in place of RDBMS. That is a prolog engine to which you could connect using an analogue to ODBC, store facts there and query them. But this means you need a way to delete the facts as well - I don't know how this can be added to the Prolog computational model. I just started with Prolog and I don't really understand your sentence about backtracking over query results - but I think that backtracking in this environment would have to be limited by a transaction boundary.

      In reality, deleting facts is generally not something one wants to do as it's considered a "non-logical" operation. However, you can use retract/1 if you really need to:

      AI-NeuralNet-Simple-0.03 $ aiprolog Welcome to AI::Prolog v 0.732 Copyright (c) 2005, Curtis "Ovid" Poe. AI::Prolog comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This library is free so +ftware; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl +itself. Type '?' for help. ?- help('retract/1') retract/1 Remove facts from the database. You cannot remove rules. This may change in the future. See assert(X). retract(loves(ovid,java)). help(retract/1) Yes ?-

      You can also just type "help" at the aiprolog prompt to see a list of all built-in predicates you can get help for:

      ?- help. Help is available for the following builtins: !/0 assert/1 call/1 consult/1 div/2 eq/2 fail/0 ge/2 gt/2 halt/1 if/3 is/2 le/2 listing/0 listing/1 lt/2 minus/2 mod/2 mult/2 ne/2 nl/0 not/1 notrace/0 once/1 or/2 plus/2 pow/2 print/1 println/1 retract/1 trace/0 true/0 var/1 write/1 writeln/1 help Yes ?-

      If you really want to get a decent grounding in Prolog, see Amzi's "Adventure in Prolog". It's a free online book which lets guides through building four different Prolog applications. It's quite cool. Most of the basics work in AI::Prolog, but it could still use a lot of work/patches.

      Cheers,
      Ovid

      New address of my CGI Course.