Business Plan and Convener's Report
JTC1/SC22/WG17 - Programming Language Prolog
2008/07/12
Period Covered:
September 2007 - August 2008
Submitted by:
Jonathan Hodgson
Convener, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 17
St. Joseph's University,
Philadelphia. PA 19131
USA
Email: jhodgson@sju.edu <mailto:jhodgson@sju.edu>
1. Management Summary
1.1 JTC1/SC22/WG17 Statement of Scope
Development and maintenance of ISO/IEC standards related to programming
language Prolog
1.2 Project Report
1.2.1 Completed Projects
ISO/IEC 13211-2. Programming language Prolog-part 2 Modules
1.2.2 Projects Underway
a. Consideration of a draft TR on Definite clause grammars,
b. A proposed draft on global variables and arrays.
c. Review of technical corrigenda to ISO/IEC 13211.
1.2.3 Cancelled Projects
None
1.3 Cooperation and Competition.
2. Period Review
2.1 Market Requirements
Prolog is a niche language. It is extensively used by a small number of
users mainly for applications in configuration, web and CGI generation,
constraint handling and natural language.
It is taught in a significant number of universities.
2.2 Achievements
A draft of a Technical report on Definite Clause Grammars was approved in 2006.
It is hoped to ballot the final version in early 2009. Paulo Moura is the editor.
Roger Scowen submitted in a set of defect reports and corrigenda.
A first part was successfully balloted in 2006. The second set was further
discussed at the WG17 meeting in Oporto. It is hoped that a ballot on these can
be taken soon.
2.3 Resources
WG17 meets as needed, usually once a year, and works by electronic
correspondence between meetings. Four countries are regular participants in
meetings: Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. More recently Hungary, Portugal
and Spain have participated.
3. Focus Next Work Period
- Completion of the TR on DCGs
- Completion of the Corrigenda.
- Further consideration of the Japanese proposal on globals and
arrays.
3.1 Deliverables
- N201. Paulo Moura. Definite Clause Grammars April 2008
- N202 Katsuhiko Nakamura and Nobukini Kino: Japanese Proposal for Global
variables in Standard Prolog March 2008.
3.2 Strategies
To proceed by producing a number of TR's on topics deemed of interest to the
Prolog community.
3.2.1 Risks
WG17 has suffered from a decline in interest in supporting standardization
efforts, however holding meetings in conjunction with the ICLP meetings
has proved to be effective in increasing participation.
3.2.2 Opportunities
Portugal has taken a more active role in Prolog standardization.
Locating the 2005 meeting with ICLP in Sitges was a success.
The 2006 meeting was colocated with FLoC (which includes ICLP) in Seattle
and was well attended. The 2007 meeting was held in Oporto, Portugal
colocated with ICLP. Again the meeting was well attended.
The 2008 meeting will be in December in Udine, Italy; once again colocated with ICLP
3.3 Work Program Priorities
The current priorities are the completion of the technical report on DCGs .
There are also a number of issues with defects in part 1 that need to be resolved.
Further work on globals and arrays is underway.
A discussion of threads has begun on an informal basis.
4. Other Items
This section includes items that are part of the Convener's Report, but not
part of the business plan.
Holding the meetings colocated with ICLP (the International conference Logic Programming)
seems to be effective in increasing participation.
4.1 Action Requests at the Forthcoming Plenary
None
4.2 Schedule
A schedule for additional work was set at the meeting in Seattle. This included:
- Resolution of the comments on the Draft TR on DCG's
- Further discussion of corrigenda to part 1.
- Exploration of additional topics for work.
4.3 WG17 Meetings
4.3.1 Recent Meetings
October 5th 2005 Sitges, Spain.
August 21st 2006, Seattle, Washington
September 12th 2007 Oporto, Portugal
None.
4.3.2 Future Meetings
December 2008. Udine, Italy