QUERY BY CLASS, RULE, AND CONCEPT

The ideal query language for a knowledge base will probably never be found: easy formulation and easy evaluation of queries are two conflicting goals. Easy formulation asks for a flexible, expressive language near to human language or gestures. Easy evaluation of queries requires an effective mapping to machine code, which computes the correct answer in a finite number of steps. This article approaches the problem by a query language with three faces. The first projects queries to concepts of the knowledge representation language KL-One for easy formulation and readability. The second presents queries as rules of a deductive database with fixpoint semantics. The third presents queries as classes whose instances are the materialized answer (view) to the query. The methods for maintaining and updating the views are compiled from their deductive interpretation.