Logic Programming and the Web

Logic programming has proven its merits in a variety of application areas including diagnostic expert systems, natural language processing and agent-based control systems. The goal of the workshop is to assess whether and in what way logic programming language constructs and programming techniques may be applied to profit from a knowledge-based approach to developing applications for the Web. Potential advantages of such an approach include knowledge-level reasoning about resources and user models and the application of logic-based inference techniques to information filtering.

Recently several implementations of Prolog in Java have been announced. Another goal of the workshop is to discuss the merits of the various implementations of Prolog for the Web, and to assess the criteria that must be met to adopt a logic programming language as a mature vehicle for the development of Web applications.

In particular agent applications may benefit from a high level formalism as offered by logic-based programming languages. Currently there seems to be a gap between the primarily logic-based models of cooperating agents and the realization of agents in a variety of primarily imperative programming languages, a gap that may be bridged by applying declarative logic-based programming languages for the realization of software agents.

Issues include:

Language constructs -- failure, backtracking, concurrency
APIs and Utilities -- Web access, document type support
Applications -- search, agents, intelligent interfaces

Program

Despite the fact that there was no formal program to start from we had an interesting session that lasted from 9.15 to well over twelve noon. After a brief introduction by the chairman, Simon Polovina compared the logic programming paradigm with existing paradigms (including Java). Then Fredik Espinoza talked about the use of Sicstus Objects in developing a framework for agent-based applications. As a surprise, Paul Tarau and Veronica Dahl showed up later in the morning. Paul gave a presentation about the use of BinProlog for developing (among other things) virtual worlds. The session was ended with a wrapup, that can be found at the top of this page.

Papers

Paul Tarau, Veronica Dahl and Koen De Bosschere Remote Execution, Mobile Code and Agents in BinProlog
Joakim Eriksson Fredrik Espinoza Niclas Finne Fredrik Holmgren Sverker Janson Niklas Kaltea Olle Olsson An Internet software platform based on SICStus Prolog
Keith Clark and Vasilios S. Lazarou Distributed Information Retrieval, Multi-Agent Systems and the role of Logic Programming
Simon Polovina Explaining Prolog in simple terms so that we can save the Web
Daniel Cabeza and Manuel Hermenegildo WWW Programming using Computational Logic Systems (and the PilloW/CIAO Library)
Anton Eliëns, Paul de Bra, Jan Treur, Francis Brazier, Hans van Vliet Web Agent Support Program
Mary Kroening Amzi CGI Interface
Thom Fruehwirth Why the Web needs Constraint-Based Programming

Related Material

Compulog Net Workshop: Logic Programming and the Internet
Repository: Logic Programming on the WWW
Clip/CompuLog-Net Page: Internet and WWW programming using LP and CLP
1st Workshop on Logic Programming Tools for INTERNET Applications Bonn, Sept 2-6, 1996
2nd International Workshop on Logic Programming Tools for Internet Applications Leuven July 8-12, 1997
Paul Tarau: Logic Programming Tools for Advanced Internet Programming
Part I: WWW Programming -- using Computational Logic Systems
Part II: Distributed/Agent Programming -- using Computational Logic Systems

Papers Participants Call for Papers WWW6 At-a-Glance Schedule Mailing list Opening/WrapUp

eliens@cs.vu.nl