Inheritance Hierarchies in Knowledge Representation and Programming Languages

Inheritance in Logic Programming Knowledge Bases

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This paper presents an extended model for a logic programming language's knowledge base. Instead of being restricted to one global knowledge base, as is the case with Prolog, we allow segmentation into units that are linked together into a lattice. Each unit defines a view on the knowledge base, which includes those clauses that have been asserted into that unit as well as clauses inherited from its ancestors higher in the lattice structure. This model supports arbitrary retraction. Retracting a clause in a knowledge base unit effectively blocks its inheritance for that unit and all of its descendants. Motivations for using this model are given. We also discuss the design iterations of a Prolog-based implementation (Pha) of this model.


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inheritance, knowledge base, prolog

InBook

Wiley

18

Maurizio Lenzerini, Daniele Nardi, and Maria Simi

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