Experience With a Functional-Logic Multi-Agent Architecture for Medical Problem Solving

INTRODUCTION There exist various experiences in constructing applications in functional and logic languages alone as reported, e.g., in the conference series Lisp and Functional Programming and Practical Applications of Prolog, respectively. Applications in integrated functional-logic languages (Hanus, 1994) have been less frequent, however, and little has been reported about experiences with them. Historically, functional-logic languages started off with practically oriented, loose couplings of LISP and PROLOG components such as LOGLISP, and LISP-based hybrid expert-system shells often contained some PROLOG-like component. In the few applications written in these LISP-PROLOG couplings and shells, however, one of the integration partners was normally dominating. Later, theoretically oriented, tight syntheses of functional and logic components such as EQLOG were studied. Even in those syntheses that were really implemented, very few applications were