Logic and Databases: A 20 Year Retrospective

At a workshop held in Toulouse, France in 1977, Gallaire, Minker and Nicolas stated that logic and databases was a eld in its own right (see 131]). This was the rst time that this designation was made. The impetus for this started approximately twenty years ago in 1976 when I visited Gallaire and Nicolas in Toulouse, France, which culminated in a workshop held in Toulouse, France in 1977. It is appropriate, then to provide an assessment as to what has been achieved in the twenty years since the eld started as a distinct discipline. In this retrospective I shall review developments that have taken place in the eld, assess the contributions that have been made, consider the status of implementations of deductive databases and discuss the future of work in this area.