louiqa@umiacs.umd.edu (Louiqa Raschid) (03/19/91)
I have taught a course in Knowledge Based Systems (graduate level) using a book by Robert? Frost, titled An introd. to knowledge based systems. I was not very happy with the book and would like some suggestions. My main problem was the order of topics that are covered, but the chapters build up on each other in a way that it is hard to switch around. The book spends a lot of time on propos. logic and alg. for resolution etc. and takes a long time to get to the relationship between logic and databases, closed world assumption, etc. For example it does not talk at all about relational query processing vs. resolution or recursive queries etc. I have looked at Nillsons' book and talked to people who teach out of it, but I feel that it is too oriented towards search etc. and does not spend much time on databases, for example. And in contrast Ullman's book (Volume II) is exclusively logic/ databases and does not cover any other topics such as prob. systems, other types of rule-based search, etc. If you have any suggestions please send me mail louiqa@umiacs.umd.edu Thanks, Louiqa Raschid