MOKUM: An Object-Oriented Active Knowledge Base System

Abstract Mokum is a knowledge base system, under development in our department. Knowledge is represented in the form of objects and a conceptual model. The objects are stored in relations in a relational database system. The conceptual model is represented in the form of Prolog rules and tables in the data dictionary. This makes it possible to combine the efficiency of the database for storing the vast amounts of data and reasoning capacity of Prolog to obtain a database of Intelligent agents , also called an active database . Conceptually, objects reflect active entities in the Universe of Discourse sending and receiving messages, changing their state and type creating and deleting other entities. The conceptual model defines static structure and dynamic behaviour of these objects. It uses inteferecing techniques and its is itself susceptible to reasoning.