Logic Programming (LP) is at the nexus of knowledge representation, AI, mathematical logic, databases, and programming languages. It allows programming to be more declarative, by specifying “what” to do instead of “how” to do it. This field is fascinating and intellectually stimulating due to the fundamental interplay among theory, systems, and applications brought about by logic.
The goal of this book is to help fill in the void in the literature with state-of-the-art surveys on key aspects of LP. Much attention was paid to making these surveys accessible to researchers, practitioners, and graduate students alike.
Table of Contents
THEORY
1. The History of Datalog
2. An Introduction to the Stable and Well-Founded Semantics of Logic Programming
3. A Survey on Probabilistic Programming
SYSTEMS
4. WAM for Everyone: A Virtual Machine for Logic Programming
5. Predicate Logic as a Modeling Language: The IDP System
6. Solverbox: Algebraic Modeling in Datalog
APPLICATIONS
7. Exploring Life: Answer Set Programming in Bioinformatics
8. State Space Search with Tabled Logic Programming
9. Natural Language Processing with (Tabled and Constraint) Logic Programming
10. Logic Programming Applications: What are the abstractions and implementations?
About the Author(s)
Michael Kifer, Stony Brook University
Michael Kifer is a professor with the Department of Computer Science, Stony Brook University, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1984 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and the M.S. degree in Mathematics in 1976 from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. Since 2012, Dr. Kifer has served as the President of the Rules and Reasoning Association (RRA). His work spans the areas of knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR), logic programming, Web information systems, and databases. He published four textbooks and numerous articles in these areas as well as co-invented F-logic, HiLog, Annotated Logic, and Transaction Logic, which are among the most widely cited works in Computer Science and Semantic Web research, in particular. Twice, in 1999 and 2002, he was a recipient of the prestigious ACM-SIGMOD “Test of Time” awards for his works on F-logic and object-oriented database languages. In 2008, he received SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship. In 2013, Dr. Kifer received another prestigious award: The 20-year “Test of Time” award from the Association for Logic Programming (ALP) for his work on Transaction Logic. In 2013, Kifer co-founded Coherent Knowledge Systems, a startup that commercializes semantic and KRR technologies.
Yanhong Annie Liu, Stony Brook University
Yanhong Annie Liu is a professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. She received her B.S. from Peking University, M.Eng. from Tsinghua University, and Ph.D. from Cornell University, all in Computer Science. Her primary research is in languages and algorithms, especially on systematic design and optimization, centered around incrementalization; the discrete counterpart of differentiation in calculus. Her current research focus is on languages and efficient implementations for secure distributed programming and for declarative system specifications. She has published in many prestigious venues, taught in a wide range of computer science areas, and presented over 100 conferences and invited talks worldwide. She serves on the ACM Books Editorial Board as the Area Editor for Programming Languages, and she is a member of IFIP WG 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi. Her awards include a State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.
