A Multi-Theory Logic Programming Language for the World Wide Web

Despite the presence of World Wide Web (WWW) architectural formalization in terms of Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style and Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA), current languages and tools for Web programming generally suffer from a lack of understanding of its design constraints and from an abstraction mismatch that makes it difficult to fully exploit the Web potential. Based on the insights gained by REST and ROA, this paper proposes that logic languages are well-suited for promoting the Web architecture and principles, especially in the straightforward mapping of REST and ROA abstractions onto elements of Contextual Logic Programming. Thus the purpose of this research is to build a logic framework for engineering applications on the WWW, designed so as to promote the architectural principles and constraints aimed at easing rapid prototyping, also allowing the prototype to evolve while supporting properties such as scalability and modifiability. Along this line, the paper presents Web Logic Programming as a Prolog-based language for the WWW embedding the core REST and ROA principles. The WebLP language is intended to represent the foundation of a logic programming framework for prototyping and engineering applications on the Web so as to follow its architectural principles and design criteria. The language operational semantics are also defined with some simple but significant programming examples.