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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Object Oriented Prolog question
Message-ID: <4851@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 28 Feb 91 03:06:20 GMT
References: <1991Feb19.093713.4151@ecrc.de> <1991Feb27.223550.22645@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 28

In article <1991Feb27.223550.22645@IRO.UMontreal.CA>, mourad@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Shibl Mourad) writes:
> In article <4835@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
> >> I am looking for an Object Oriented Prolog to develop a Natural
> >> Languages application.
> >
> > Just as a matter of curiosity, why on earth do you want an *Object-Oriented* 
> > Prolog (whatever that is)?
>  
> The application involves information retreival through interviewing a
> human expert; the required information could be represented by a
> hierarchy of objects.  On the surface it seems useful to have the
> advantages of Prolog for NL processing combined with an> Object Oriented
> representation.

You must clearly distinguish between OBJECTS and inheritance.
It is possible to have objects without inheritance.
It is possible to have inheritance without objects.
(For example, E.F.Codd presented an extension of relational data
bases having inheritance, years and years ago.)
You say that "the required information could be represented by a
hierarchy of objects", but what do these objects DO?  How do they
change?  What are their side effects?  What is inherited in this
hierarchy?  Why is a declarative formalism inappropriate?

Can you say more about your application?  Can you for example give a
transcript of the kind of human/machine interaction you'd like to see?
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