The "Software Engineering" of Expert Systems: Is Prolog Appropriate?

This paper is a preliminary assessment of the viability of Prolog as a basis for the design of expert systems, where the major competition is assumed to be from Lisp and Lisp-based systems. We critically examine the basic features of Prolog from various perspectives to see to what extent they support (or hinder) expert system development. Our conclusion is that while Prolog has significant assets along several dimensions, Prolog as it exists today needs to be modified and appropriately enhanced to make it competitive to extant Lisp-based systems; we suggest the nature of some of these modifications.