Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/K79635/01
Title:	DETECTING AND EXPLOITING DETERMINACY IN LOGIC PROGRAMS
Principal Investigator:	Hill, Dr PM
Other Investigators:	Cohn, Professor AG
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:	Pre Nexus Migration
Department:	Sch of Computing
Organisation:	University of Leeds
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	01 January 1996	Ends:	31 March 1998	Value (£):	97,124
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Fundamentals of Computing
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Information Technologies
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
One attractive, unique feature of logic programming languages is their ability to succinctly and declaratively express search. The alternatives of a search are simply expressed as non-deterministic predicates. Search is then implemented by backtracking through these predicates; in effect exploring all alternatives of the search tree until a solution is found. Backtracking, however, brings with it penalties which are incurred even in logic programs which do not deploy search. To be more precise, the backtracking mechanism incurs time and memory overheads in sequential processor execution; limits the parallelism that can be extracted from a logic program; and finally impedes program transformation. As a consequence, programmers often resort to non-declarative language features that force deterministic behaviour. The primary aim of the project is to construct determinancy analysers which will detect deterministic predicates and therefore underpin the efficient sequential and parallel execution of languages such as Prolog and Goedel. This will not only improve performance, but will also enable the programmer to write more declarative code that is quicker to program and easier to maintain. The relevance of this work to program transformation strategies, the design of new declarative languages, and the implementation of automated theorem provers will also be investigated.
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Organisation Website:	http://www.leeds.ac.uk