Re: Production Web Applications in Prolog

Hi Annie

I used many SWI-Prolog snippets to build the server part of an e-Commerce
of a friend of mine.
You can see it running on standard, inexpensive LAMP hosting at Erboristeria
S.Anna <http://www.erboristeriasantanna.it/>.
I found Prolog very useful to handle many details required to actually
operate a store.

Then, more or less in chronological order used to develop the site:

- Web scrap: library(xpath) is a joy to use. More difficult is HTML
parsing: due to a rather low error tolerance, getting the structure from
older sites can be problematic.
  But when it works, it's great !
- To load/massage DB data: I have a DCG (really compact) that allows to
load in Prolog mem a SQL dump.
  It takes the same time as to bulk load in MySQL (not bad,
phrase_from_file !).
- Use as a script/file interfacing, for instance to massage tons of images,
check the server alignment, format Flash presentations
  (well, I wrote the interface 3D in Flash: only the data management is in
Prolog...)
- Analyze / update relational data: like parsing some Excel sheets from CSV
and update the database, acting *both* in Prolog and PHP.
  Data is updated in bulk load, usually by means of delta temporary tables
to update in join.
- Of course, worth to note is that the LAMP part is rock solid: running
OpenCart (a clean MVC), albeit not the latest version...

Well, it's there...

bye Carlo


2013/8/18 Anne Ogborn <[email protected]>

> I'm prepping my talk for strangeloop.
>
> I'm forever being challenged by programmers with 'does anybody actually
> use this stuff?'
>
> I *know*, from the interest on this list when web 'stuff' comes up, that
> many of you are writing
> web applications in SWI-Prolog.  But the list of applications I actually
> know about is fairly short.
>
> Here's the list I know about:
> * SecuritEase - Australian stock settlement site. Uses YAP and the SWI
> http libs, I believe
> * swi-prolog.org
> * cliopatria's dashboard
> * RLa's blog
> * Pengine
> * The installer for Cogbot
> * UH HHP quiz system
> * UH HHP Virtual administrative website
> * http://videogames.pricecharting.com/  apparently is on some version of
> Prolog
> * http://www.pathwayslms.com:19049/index.htm     geohashing application
>
> Of these 10, 2 are by the VNU crew, 4 are by me, and a couple are dodgy
> (in that I'm not totally sure
> what they're in, I'm inferring). I'm sure some of you out there must be
> actually writing something!
>
> SURELY this list isn't exhaustive.  So I'm pleading for help to find more
> examples.
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