Prolog versus Kee — A case study

Abstract

The selection of the software development tool for the development of an expert system is a difficult and often disputed decision. This paper describes a comparison of a knowledge engineering tool, Kee, and a general purpose language, Prolog, on concrete and real life example from AGATHA, an electronic circuit board diagnosis expert system.

Prolog is a high-level programming language with flexible and powerful inference mechanisms. Kee is a big tool that supports a frame-based knowledge representation, an object-oriented programming style and a built-in rule system. It also offers a window environment suitable for rapid development of user-interface prototypes.

Prolog's representation is more succinct, implicit and uses problem specific predicates and therefore leaves more room for personal programming styles. Kee is more verbose, explicit and uses standard templates. The maintainability of a Prolog implementation relies heavily on good documentation. In Kee, the unavoidable ‘escapes to Lisp’ require a maintainer to be fluent in Kee and Lisp.

Both Prolog and Kee require a considerable investment in learning time.