[comp.lang.prolog] I will be pleased to send my dissertation

yang@koeavax.UUCP (01/27/87)

Hello, I'm a Ph.D student, majoring in logic programming, at Keio 
University. I have just finished writing my doctoral dissertation 
titled 'A Parallel Logic Programming Language and Its Implementation'. 
You can find an abstract of my dissertation in the rest this message.  

Does anybody have an interest in it? I'd like to send you a copy upon
your request. I'm sorry that I will basically send it by sea mail
because of a financial reason. If you'd like to read it as soon as
possible, please mention this in your reply and send me about $15. 
Then, I will be able to send you in air mail.  

	I look forward to hearing from you !
        Thanks in advance,               --- Rong Yang
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 Rong Yang			|  yang%keio.junet@utokyo-relay
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			<< ABSTRACT >>

This dissertation presents a parallel logic programming language 
named P-Prolog, and discusses its implementation. 

To date, two main research areas
for parallel logic programming have been studied:  

(1). To develop methods, or control strategies, for executing
     pure Horn clause programs in parallel.
(2). To develop new parallel languages based on guarded Horn
     clauses, and implementation methods for them.

For (1), it is likely that to execute pure Horn clause programs with 
both and-parallelism and or-parallelism is quite difficult, so 
restrictions are usually imposed. The drawback with (2) is that guarded 
Horn clause languages sacrifice completeness, because they do not 
incorporate don't-know non-determinism.

This dissertation presents an alternative proposal, P-Prolog, which 
provides the advantages of guarded Horn clauses while retaining 
don't-know non-determinism where required. P-Prolog programs are 
composed of a kind of extended guarded Horn clauses called classified
Horn clauses} which are introduced in this dissertation. A novel concept 
introduced in classified Horn clauses is the exclusive relation of 
guarded Horn clauses. Two advantages resulting from the introduction of 
classified Horn clauses are:

(1). The language combines and-parallelism and or-parallelism. Therefore
     the execution of P-Prolog can incorporate both don't-care non-
     determinism and don't-know non-determinism.
(2). The input/output pattern of predicates need not be fixed. Its 
     synchronization mechanism allows the direction of data flow to be 
     determined dynamically.

In terms of implementation, combining and- and or- parallelism is regarded 
as a difficult subject. This dissertation presents an or-tree model and an 
implementation scheme for it, to combine these kinds of parallelism with
reasonable efficiency. The model and implementation scheme discussed 
in this dissertation can be applied not only to P-Prolog, but also to other 
parallel logic languages. 

This dissertation is divided into two parts: language and implementation. 
In Part I, a brief review of the theory of logic programming and a survey 
of parallel logic languages are first given; then the concepts, syntax, 
semantics and characteristics of P-Prolog are described. In Part II, 
the three main problems of implementation are discussed: representation 
of data, management of multiple environments and communication between 
and-processes and or-processes.