MANDALA: A LOGIC BASED KNOWLEDGE PROGRAMMING SYSTEM.

Mandala is a programming system aimed for developing knowledge information processing systems in logic programming framework. It is not only a knowledge programming system but also a basis for a knowledge base management system. The nature of this duality comes directly from two-facedness of logic programming, that is, both procedural and declarative interpretation. Mandala provides users with parallel execution environment, allowing them to describe multiple-processes. On this parallel execution environment, cooperative problem solving systems can be constructed, in which more than one problem solver can be active in parallel. Mandala realizes object oriented programming using a process mechanism in KL1, thus manipulating dynamically changing states. Objects in Mandala can be seen as problem solvers which have inference engines and knowledge base.