Seamless integration of rule-based knowledge and object-oriented functionality with linguistic symbiosis

Abstract

Software applications often contain implicit knowledge in addition to functionality which is inherently object-oriented. Many approaches and systems exist that focus on separating rule-based knowledge from object-oriented functionality and representing it explicitly in a logic reasoning system. Support for seamless integration of this knowledge with the object-oriented functionality improves software development and evolution. Our hypothesis is that a linguistic symbiosis is required between the logic reasoning and object-oriented programming paradigms in order to achieve seamless integration.This paper presents a symbiotic extension of SOUL, a system which implements a logic programming language and a production system in Smalltalk. The presence of these two logic reasoning systems in SOUL ensures a comprehensive coverage of rule-based reasoning styles, more specifically forward and backward chaining. Our approach is evaluated by means of two case studies. We summarise a comprehensive survey, which shows that existing systems do not fully support seamless integration.