Re: Keeping PowerLoom around as a daemon?

On Jun 17, 2008, at 7:55 PM, Rich Morin wrote:

> I think I asked some similar questions several years ago, but
> many of the details have no doubt changed on all sides.  So...
>
> I'm interested in being able to "load up" a PL instance with a
> bunch of information, ask questions of it, then adjust the set
> of information, ask more questions, etc.  My language of choice
> is Ruby, but I'm willing to generate and parse KIF or other
> formats, if need be.
>
> Could someone give me a hand-waving summary of how one might
> approach this, what pitfalls to consider, etc?  My need isn't
> imminent, but I'd like to know if I'm depending on something
> that may not be all that easy to make work.

There are a couple of options.  I'm not sure what sort of integration  
Ruby might have with Java or C++, so some of this may or may not work.

1.  Just create a combined application.  If Ruby supports easy  
integration with C++, then you can just load the C++ libraries and run  
a combined application that includes PowerLoom.

2.  Use a tcp-stream based server.  We have a Java class  
edu.isi.powerloom.logic.PowerLoomServer that implements a simple tcp- 
stream based listener.   You would start up a Java process with the  
server and have it load your knowledge base.  It then begins listening  
for tcp connections on a port you specify.   You send commands and  
queries to server and it gives answers back.  This is the simplest  
server-based solution.

3.  You could use the PowerLoom SOAP server to handle the  
interactions.  This is a bit more involved, and I don't think we have  
that code in the standard distribution -- mainly because we haven't  
really written the documentation on how to set it up.  But that would  
allow you to use PowerLoom as a web service.