[mod.ai] Quick summary of NAIL

avg@DIABLO (Allen VanGelder) (01/29/86)

From: Allen VanGelder <avg@diablo>

         [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]

NAIL is a research project one of whose goals is to determine
what degree of expressiveness and efficiency can be obtained
by a logic based language without resorting to certain
"undesirable" non-logical mechanisms such as cut, assert and
retract, rule order, and subgoal order. Jeff Ullman, the PI,
likes to draw the analogy:

"NAIL is to Prolog as Relational DBMS is to CODASYL."

NAIL is in a preliminary stage of development at Stanford CSD.
An overview, "Design overview of the Nail! System" is available
from Professor Ullman.

NAIL! is an acronym for "Not Another Implementation of Logic!"