The commercial use of PROLOG

Abstract

Purpose

The commercial use of the logic programming language PROLOG is reviewed, with reference to applications in legal document preparation, advice to medical practitioners, natural language processing and analysis of social networks. Natural language processing is applied to story generation with extension to a flexible scheme for production and editing of documents, and in a separate scheme to computer programming. PROLOG is also the basis of a means of network analysis that has been applied in the study of business alliances and in analysis of terrorist networks.

Design/methodology/approach

The aim is to review developments accessible through the internet, especially those of general cybernetic interest.

Findings

Reference is made to tested practical applications and it is shown that logic programming continues to be a live topic. There are implications for its relationship to human mental processes, but these are not explored here.

Practical implications

In a large class of application areas, the use of logic programming allows rapid and relatively error‐free program development, possible with modest hardware requirements.

Originality/value

It is hoped this is a valuable periodic review.

Citation

Andrew, A.M. (2005), "The commercial use of PROLOG", Kybernetes, Vol. 34 No. 5, pp. 599-601. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920510595300