Comparing Formal Specification Languages for Complex Reasoning Systems
Frank van Harmelen, Ramón López de Mántaras, Jacek Malec, Jan Treur, J. Treur, T. Wetter · 1993
This paper presents a comparison between eight specification languages discussed during the Workshop on Formal Specification Techniques for Complex Reasoning Systems held in Vienna during the ECAI'92 conference. The languages as discussed here possess many important common characteristics, but also differ substantially. The analysis discussed here departs from looking at the purposes of the presented languages (Section 1). The comparison in Section 2 focuses on the way of dealing with heuristic knowledge in the specification of the common example task. In Section 3 some differences between the languages are discussed: ffl expressive power; ffl the way of specifying control knowledge; ffl layering of the system architecture. In Section 4 we identify where already a certain consensus can be found; points are discussed that are in common for most of the languages: ffl modularity; ffl local declarativeness; ffl multi-level view on a specification; ffl distinct specification of stati...