AI.ELLIE@MCC.COM.UUCP (06/15/87)
Please join the AI Group for the following speaker:
PARTIAL ORDER PROGRAMMING
D. Stott Parker
UCLA Computer Science Department
June 19 - 10:00
MCC Balcones Auditorium
We introduce a declarative programming paradigm that describes
computation with partial orders. A partial order program corresponds
to a collection of constraints
u >= C(u)
where >= is a partial order on a domain of `objects' and `values',
u is an object, and C(u) is an object or a value.
Semantics of such a program consist of assignments of values to the
objects u that satisfy the inequalities. When C is a monotone and
continuous function, fixpoint semantics of the program may be
obtained easily and naturally.
The partial order programming paradigm has interesting properties:
(1) It generalizes various computational paradigms (logic,
functional, object-oriented, and others) in a clean way.
(2) It takes thorough advantage of known results for continuous
functionals on partial orders, providing a clear semantics
for the paradigm.
(3) It presents a framework that may be more generally acceptable
for dealing with `cognitive' computation problems, including
natural language processing and knowledge representation.
(4) It coincides with recent work on relaxation solution of a
variety of problems including consistent labelling, path
problems, and linear algebraic systems.
June 19 - 10:00
MCC Balcones Auditorium