Using Reflective Logic Programming to Describe Domain Knowledge as an Aspect

Abstract

Software applications, mostly consisting of an algorithm applied to domain knowledge, are hard to maintain and to reuse as a result of their hard coded combination. We propose to follow the principles of aspect-oriented programming, separating the domain from the algorithm and describing them in a logic and conventional programming language respectively. In this paper, we report on an experiment that was conducted to validate this hypothesis, and to investigate the requirements of a programming environment for this con_guration. An already existing environment that uses a logic meta-language to reason about objectoriented systems, SOUL, is used as a starting point for this experiment. The result is a working implementation in SOUL, which validates our ideas, reveals mechanisms that require more research, and points to other features that should be included.

This work is partly sponsored by the Vlaams Instituut voor de Bevordering van het Wetenschappelijk-Technologisch Onderzoek in de Industrie.