Re: W3C RIF: "recursive rules" vs "recursive terms"

Yes, I know about Alexandre's method.
But the first paper on Magic sets was (1985)
Magic sets and other strange ways to implement logic programs
Francois Bancilhon 	
David Maier 	
Yehoshua Sagiv 	
Jeffrey D Ullman
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=15399 

Well, it is hard to establish now who had the first idea.
But that CLIPS manual was still couple of years older!


	--michael  


> Michael Kifer wrote:
> 
> > Many years ago I stumbled upon a CLIPS manual where it was described how to
> > avoid computing the entire model. It was essentially a description of a
> > rudimentary Magic Set transformation.  The date on that manual was 1983 or
> > 1984 - a year or two before the first magic set paper appeared.
> > 
> > The point is that one can write bad rules bottom up or top down - doesn't
> > matter. You can avoid computing the entire model, using smart techniques. That
> > CLIPS manual author of > 20 years ago was definitely very smart. Too bad he
> > didn't think that his trick was worth a publication :-)
> > 
> > 	--michael  
> 
> "Magic Set" techniques have been [re]discovered in many guises by several
> people. In France, for example, it is better known as "La Méthode Alexandre"
> due to Jean-Marc Kerisit [J. Rohmer, R. Lescoeur, J-M Kerisit: The Alexander
> Method - A Technique for The Processing of Recursive Axioms in Deductive
> Databases. New Generation Computing 4(3): 273-285 (1986)]. That was the PhD
> thesis of J-M Kerisit at U. of Paris 7 (88) and was worked out independently
> of the Bancilhon, Ramakrishnan, etc., Magic Set formulation (ca. 86 as well).
> 
> This is true for many ideas, BTW. Another essential idea that has been
> [re]invented several times by several people under many apparently
> unrelated guises in several disciplines is the notion of continuation and
> monad in FP, difference lists an such incomplete data structures in LP,
> accumulators in LIFE, Didier Rémy's extensible records in CAML, Montague
> grammars in linguistics, Categorial grammars in NLP, etc., ... It was
reinvented again by Harold Boley today - although IMHO as an overkill -
> as a trick to accommodate the felxible arity of slotted terms ... :-D
> 
> Nothing is new under the sun... The longer my research experience, the
> truer this truism seems to be! :-P
> 
> Merry Times and Happy Feet To All! :-)
> 
> -hak
> -- 
> Hassan Aït-Kaci
> ILOG, Inc. - Product Division R&D
> tel/fax: +1 (604) 930-5603 - email: hak @ ilog . com
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 20 December 2006 12:31:21 UTC