I’m currently reviewing an existing system written in vb6 that management at the company I work for has finally decided to get behind porting it. Their plan is to port it to Visual Studio (VB.net) as that is what they are comfortable with. I understand this desire, but I’m also hesitant to jump right in and do so because they are also looking for “better ways to do things” during the transition. This particular system is very “rules driven” and we have a massive amount of code dedicated to supporting these rules. In my opinion this is just screaming for Prolog to be a part of the solution, and since I have some say in the matter I’ll be as neck deep in prolog over the next couple of months. I’ll be trying to get a proof of concept in place before the conversion gets underway so I can prove its value. Either that, or I might just prove that it won’t do the job I want it to and I will be able to dive into the rewrite as previously planned without hesitation or hinderance.

While I can’t tell you what the project is I can tell you that in just one of my fact databases I expect to have well over 1/2 million facts. The facts are relatively static so that’s good. The facts will be queried upon often over 1million times per day and it should be able to handle that without breaking a sweat as this is only about 5% of the total volume we expect to see.

So, that being said, I’m working on compiling a list of Prolog references (websites mainly) that will help me progress as quickly and painlessly as possible. If you have any suggestions for books I’d also love to hear them and will likely be adding them to the post or as seperate posts as I go.

So, here come my links on into topics:

http://boklm.eu/prolog/page_0.html

SWI-Prolog
A short Introduction to Prolog
A Short Tutorial On Prolog
Introduction to Prolog for Mathematicians
iProlog Programmer’s Manual
Prolog Tutorials
A Concise Introduction to Prolog