Towards Intelligent Databases

This article is a presentation of the objectives and techniques of deductive databases. The deductive approach to databases aims at extending with intensional definitions other database paradigms that describe applications extensionaUy. We first show how constructive specifications can be expressed with deduction rules, and how normative conditions can be defined using integrity constraints. We outline the principles of bottom-up and top-down query answering procedures and present the techniques used for integrity checking. We then argue that it is often desirable to manage with a database system not only database applications, but also specifications of system components. We present such meta-level specifications and discuss their advantages over conventional approaches

A Definitional approach to the combination of functional and relational programming

We show how the programming language GCLA can be used to naturally express both relational and functional programs in an integrated framework. We give a short introduction to GCLA, and to the theory of partial inductive definitions on which GCLA is based. GCLA is best regarded as a logic programming language, but instead of saying that the query follows from the program in some a priori given logic, we say that the program defines the logic in which the query is proved. We then demonstrate how to implement both relational and functional programs as well as a combination of them in GCLA

A Relational Derivation of a Functional Program

This article is an introduction to the use of relational calculi in deriving programs. Using the relational caluclus Ruby, we derive a functional program that adds one bit to a binary number to give a new binary number. The resulting program is unsurprising, being the standard $quot;column of half-adders$quot;, but the derivation illustrates a number of points about working with relations rather than with functions

Parallel asynchronous computation of the values of an associative function

This paper shows an application of a formal approach to parallel program design. The basic model is related to temporal logics. We summarize the concepts of a relational model of parallelism in the introduction. The main part is devoted to the problem of synthesizing a solution for the problem of parallel asynchronous computation of the values of an associative function. The result is a programming theorem, which is wide applicable for different problems. The abstract program is easy to implement effectively on several architectures. The applicability of results is investigated for parallel architectures such as for hypercubes and transputer networks