🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <47016@linus.UUCP> wdh@linus.UUCP (W. Dale Hall) writes:
>Does anyone out there in net.land have any experience with the
>products of Arity Corporation?  I am considering obtaining their
>"Combination Package" which has Prolog (compiler and interpreter), an
>Expert Systems Development Package (presumably a shell and some
>built-in functions to make development a tolerable experience), an SQL
>Development Package (for database manipulation), and some form of
>Prolog toolbox. 

I have been using Arity/Prolog for over 2 years now.  (I use the
compiler and interpreter.  I also have limited experience with the
toolbox, but none at all with the expert system package.)  We have
developed an executable specification/modeling tool, which consists
of more than 100 pages of Prolog.  It runs under C-Prolog, Quintus
Prolog and Arity/Prolog.  In general, the code that runs under one
Prolog runs under the others (there is less than one page of code
difference among the three).  Normally, I do most of my development
using Arity/Prolog.  I tried to put up our modeling tool under
ALS Prolog (on the PC, with the idea of eventually transferring
it to the MAC).  However, I discovered many problems with ALS
and it was unable to handle a program of the size of our tool.
Arity/Prolog Versions 5.0 and 5.0x (and presumably 5.1) handle it easily.

I started with Version 4 and upgraded to Version 5.0x last summer.
Version 4 was slow, and didn't allow you to control much in the way
of your environment (e.g. heap sizes).  Howver, if you wrote "kosher"
Prolog, it worked well enough.  Versions 5.0 (and higher) allow much
more control, which is important if you write large Prolog programs.

Versions 5.0 and 5.0x were incredibly buggy when I got them.  It took about
1 1/2 days to transfer our system from Version 4 to Version 5.0x.  Many
problems were only resolved by calling Arity/Prolog customer support
and asking for help.  (For example, "reconsult" did not work properly
and "listing" did not work properly.)  However, once these initial
problems were resolved (an interim Version was downloaded from the
Arity customer bulletin board), I had no further problems.  Other
people here found additional problems with Version 5.0x (the interface
to C didn't work well and there was a problems with definite clause
grammars).  However, Versions 5.0 and 5.0x ran like "a bat out of hell".
It was much faster, for example, than interpreted C-Prolog on a Vax 750
or a Microvax (and this was just interpreted Prolog).

However, the new Version 5.1 seems to have solved all these problems,
according to my colleagues at GTE Labs.  I have not been able to try
out 5.1 as I just received it a week or two ago, and my PC died recently
and is undergoing major repairs.

I recommend Arity/Prolog.  They have a dialect of Prolog that is similar,
but not identical, to Clocksin & Mellish.  It is based on Dec-10 Prolog.
I have also found the customer service people at Arity to be quite helpful.
However, the Arity sense of time seems to be different than mine.
When I ran into problems last summer with 5.0 and 5.0x, I was told
that 5.1 would be shipped "in a few weeks".  I just finally received
it a couple of weeks ago.


-- 
Suzanne Sluizer                CSNET:  slzr%gte.com@RELAY.CS.NET
GTE Laboratories               UUCP:   ...!harvard!bunny!slzr
617-466-2882
"Truth is a pathless land." -- Krishnamurti