Springer Compass International - Böcker

Not long ago" Dennis Merritt wrote one of the best books that I know of about implementing expert systems in Prolog, and I was very glad he published it in our series. The only problem is there are still some unfortunate people around who do not know Prolog and are not sufficiently prepared either to read Merritt's book, or to use this extremely productive language, be it for knowledge-based work or even for everyday programming. Possibly this last statement may surprise you if you were under the impression that Prolog was an "artificial intelligence language" with very limited application potential. Please believe this editor's statement that quite the opposite is true: for at least four years, I have been using Prolog for every programming task in which I am given the option of choosing the language. Therefore, I 'am indeed happy that Dennis Merritt has written another good book on my language of choice, and that it meets the high standard he set with his prior book, Building Expert Systems in Prolog. All that remains for me to do is to wish you success and enjoyment when taking off on your Adventure in Prolog.

When I compare the books on expert systems in my library with the production expert systems I know of, I note that there are few good books on building expert systems in Prolog. Of course, the set of actual production systems is a little small for a valid statistical sample, at least at the time and place of this writing - here in Gennany, and in the first days of 1989. But there are at least some systems I have seen running in real life commercial and industrial environments, and not only at trade shows. I can observe the most impressive one in my immediate neighborhood. It is installed in the Telephone Shop of the Gennan Federal PTT near the Munich National Theater, and helps configure telephone systems and small PBXs for mostly private customers. It has a neat, graphical interface, and constructs and prices an individual telephone installation interactively before the very eyes of the customer. The hidden features of the system are even more impressive. It is part of an expert system network with a distributed knowledge base that will grow to about 150 installations in every Telephone Shop throughout Gennany. Each of them can be updated individually overnight via Teletex to present special offers or to adapt the selection process to the hardware supplies currently available at the local ware­ houses.

This book is the first volume in a series entitled The Modula-2 Software Component Library. Charles Lins collection of reusable standard software components, could be the basis for every programmers software project in Modula-2. Components that are implementations of commonly used data structures are presented, along with an adequate description of their functionality and efficiency. Moreover, the books provide the background necessary to tailor these components to the specific needs of any Modula-2 environment. For every Modula-2 programmer this series of books might prove as useful and indispensible as the original language reference by Niklaus Wirth.

This book is the second volume in a series entitled The Modula-2 Software Component Library. Charles Lins' collection of reusable standard software components could be the basis for every programmer's software project in Modula-2. Components that are implementations of commonly used data structures are presented, along with a description of their functionality and efficiency. Moreover, the books provide the background necessary to tailor these components to the specific needs of any Modula-2 environment. For every Modula-2 programmer, this series of books could prove as useful and indispensable as the original language reference by Niklaus Wirth. This second volume introduces software modules for lists, queues, and deques.

2 Source Code Availability All of the source code in this volume, and some that is not, is available from the author for $20. The author is also interested in learning of any errors that may be found, though care has been taken in the construction of the modules to minimize the possibility of their occurence. Any other comments, suggestions, recommenda- tions, questions, or experiences with the use of these modules would also be of interest. The reader may contact the author via the publisher at the following address: C. Lins: Modula-2 Source Code c/o Springer-Verlag 815 De La Vina Street Santa Barbara, CA 93101 USA As of February 1989, source code is available on two 3. 5" Macintosh diskettes (800K HFS format) for Bob Campbell's Modula-2 compiler for MPW(formerly TML Modula-2) and the MacMETH Modula-2 compiler from ETH Zurich. The author intends to port this software to both the SemperSoft and MetCom Modula- 2 compilers on the Macintosh. For the IBM PC (and compatibles) the software is available for TopSpeed Modula-2 (a product of JPI). The source code will soon be converted to work with Logitech's Modula-2 compiler as well as Stony Brook's Modula-2.Please mention your hardware platform as well as the volume(s) in which you are interested Development Environment The software for this volume was developed using the MPW (Macintosh(TM) Programmer' s Workshop) version 3. 0 and Bob Campbell's Modula-2 compiler ver- sion 1. 4d7.

Source Code Availability All of the source code found in this volume, and some that is not, is available from the author at a nominal fee. The author is interested in learning of any errors that may be found, though care has been taken in the construction of the modules to minimize these. The author is also interested in other comments, suggestions, recommendations, questions or experiences with the use of these modules. Contact the author through the following address: Modula-2 Software c/o Springer-Verlag 815 De La Vina St. Santa Barbara, CA 93101 As of February 1988, source code is available on 3.5" Macintosh diskettes (800K HFS format) for the TML Modula-2 compiler for MPW and the Mac­ METH Modula-2 compiler from ETH Ziirich. 1 Specification Requirements for specification of procedure and data abstractions were previously covered in Volume 1, Chapter 2. A summary is provided of the specification for­ mat used in this book. The format is adapted from that Guttag and Liskov [10] developed for the CLU language. It consists of relatively few constructs, is semi­ formal by providing a rigorous definition of the syntax and semantics of opera­ tions, and it provides powerful facilities for defining abstract data types. 1.1 Specification of Procedure Abstractions Specification of a procedure requires a full description of syntax and semantics. Syntax the name of the procedure by name, the name and type of each ar­ gument or result, and the order in which the arguments and results occur.

The Ada Generic Library provides an extensive well-documented library of generic packages whose use can substantially increase software productivity and reliability. The construction of the library follows a new approach whose principles include the following: - Extensive use of generic algorithms, such as generic sort and merge. - Building up functionality in layers. - Obtaining high efficiency in spite of the layering through the use of Ada's inline compiler directive. This volume contains eight Ada packages, with over 170 subprograms for various linear data structures based on linked lists. Professional Ada programmers will find The Ada Generic Library an invaluable tool in building application programs or in further construction of generic libraries. For these users the source code can be obtained on diskettes. The volume will also be useful to those interested in programming methodology, software reusability, and software engineering.

Based on a number of sample systems of varying complexity, this book illustrates the practical aspects of developing expert systems and knowledge-based applications software. The programming language used is Prolog (Clocksin-Mellish standard). The examples deal with such topics as techniques for heuristic optimization, the implementation of "frames", the construction of explanatory components, etc. The complete, functional code for the sample systems is provided in the appendix and can be used as a basis for further development. This book is not only suitable for self-study, seminars or lectures, but also as a valuable reference and guide for software developers in both commercial and academic environments.