SML: Symbolic manipulation language: A graphic-oriented language for the description of a logic interpreter

摘要

Knowledge engineering tools are urgently needed to develop and realize knowledge-based systems in the design phase, and especially to describe the logic inference machine.This paper presents a specification of a graphic-oriented design tool. It assists during the development and evaluation of control/search strategies for reasoning in a problem-solving component of knowledgebased information systems. The SML—Symbolic Manipulation Language—supports the formal concepts and facilitates the functional representation of logical inference mechanisms via graphic symbols. The SML approach is based on a set of fundamental graphic elements whose semantics are characterized by a defined interpretation; the process is realized by respective proof functions.By using a graphic user interface, complex information about the status of the designed interpreter and the condition of the manipulated knowledge base may be visualized. One application example based on the Prolog proof mechanism describes the SML concepts in this paper.