Conference turris::languages

138.0. "DECWRL Modula-2 & DLISP" by COOKIE::DOUCETTE (Chuck Doucette) Wed May 13 1987 14:00

	This note is to let people know about a presentation on two languages.
I will let people know about DECWRL Modula-2, and my colleague will describe
our work on DLISP (based on XLISP v1.6).

Chuck

P.S.	The original announcement follows the FF.

 
+---------------+
| d i g	i t a l	|			INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM
+---------------+
 
 
TO: Whom it may concern			DATE:	April 8, 1987
					FROM:	Ellen Oliver
					DEPT:	Database Systems A/D
					LOC:	CXO1-2/N22
					EXT:	522-2089
					NET:	COOKIE::OLIVER
 
SUBJECT:	Database Systems A/D Technology Transfer Presentation


	Who:		Dave Wecker and Chuck Doucette

	What:		A. 1)	The GODZILLA Project : AI/KBS component
				(including an overview of DLISP V3.0)

			   2)	DECWRL Modula-2 : A Pratical Implementation 
				Language

			B. The DLISP Language

	Where:		Pythagoras room in ZKO-2/N8
			(Spit Brook Rd. facility in Nashua, NH) 

	When:		Thursday, May 28, 1987 at 2:00 pm


1.	INTRODUCTION:

	The Database Systems Advanced Development group is pleased to announce
that it will be giving a presentation for anyone interested in attending, but
especially for members of the Database Systems organization and language
development groups. The first two parts of the presentation (A. 1 & 2) will be
approximately 20 minutes long each, followed by a short break. Part B will
begin at about 3:00 pm and run for approximately 50 minutes for those who wish
to remain.

2.	ABSTRACTS:

A. 1)
        In this part of the presentation the AI/KBS component of the GODZILLA 
project will be discussed.  The functional requirements of this piece of the 
project led to the development of a language we call DLISP.  The current 
version runs on both VMS and ULTRIX and includes:

	o  Functional Programming via a compliant subset of Common Lisp.
	o  Logic Programming (in the same spirit as Prolog).
	o  Object Programming (in the same spirit as Smalltalk).
	o  Full database integration.


   2)
	Modula-2 is a descendant of Pascal that was originally designed by
Niklaus Wirth. The aim of this presentation is to demonstrate the usefulness
of DECWRL Modula-2 as a development language. It has some significant
extensions to the Modula-2 language standard (which will be presented), and is
fairly machine independent (it can easily be modified to generate code for
non-VAX hardware - such as the titan). Benchmarks figures will be shown which
indicate code (generated by this compiler) is comparable to the best VAX
compilers. The compiler was originally designed and developed by Michael L.
Powell (for use on VAX hardware under UNIX based operating systems), further
improved (and currently maintained by) Joel McCormack, and now available on
VMS (thanks to me - Chuck Doucette). This is an experimental compiler (not a
DEC product - FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY). Finally, note that this was designed for
use under UNIX based operating systems (i.e. ULTRIX) and as such, there is
currently no source level debugging support for VMS (except at the MACRO
level) - only under ULTRIX with dbx.

B.
    In this portion of the presentation, details of The DLISP language will be 
presented along with examples and discussion.  We strongly suggest that
persons who attend the in depth discussion take the time to read through the
documentation (at least once) beforehand.

3.	DETAILS (pointers to documentation & source code):

DLISP:
	Software and documentation is available for VMS by:

	$ COPY COOKIE::DISK$GZ_DISK:[DOUCETTE]DLISP.BAK []
	$ BACKUP DLISP.BAK/SAVE_SET/SELECT=[DOUCETTE.DLISP...] [.DLISP...]

	Software is available for ULTRIX by:

	% dcp shodha::/vs1/deuce/dlisp.tar . ; tar xf dlisp.tar . &

DECWRL Modula-2:

	Please contact Joel McCormack @ SONORA::JOEL.